


Life Endures

by jane_x80



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Episode: s03e24 The Divine Move, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Stiles Stilinski, Post-Episode: s03e24 The Divine Move, Post-Nogitsune, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Pre-Slash, Sick Character, Sick Stiles Stilinski, Sleepwalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 22:40:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28928205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: After Stiles is freed from the nogitsune possession, he does not seem to be getting better, or getting back to normal. He blames himself for the deaths caused by the fox demon and is struggling to cope. Derek begins to help him and things seem to be improving until Stiles sleepwalks and cannot be found. Again.The pack will need to figure out what is going on to help Stiles.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 26
Kudos: 158
Collections: Every Fandom Reverse Bang 2020, Suggested Good Reads





	1. Chapter One: Derek

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art for “Life Endures” by jane_x80](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28648359) by [kiayea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiayea/pseuds/kiayea). 



> This is the second of my two [Every Fandom Reverse Bang](https://everyfandombangs.wordpress.com/reverse-bang/) stories for this year! This story is inspired by the gorgeous artwork made by [kiayea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiayea/pseuds/kiayea). It's my first Teen Wolf fiction, so I hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> The title of the story is a bit of the lyrics from [Amazing Grace](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Obp-9BEZe1c), performed by Pentatonix.

**Chapter One: Derek**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

Derek Hale felt more settled these days. Ever since he decided that it was his duty to carry on the family tradition of protecting Beacon Hills and helped Scott and the pack defeat the nogitsune all without killing Stiles, he’d started to feel as if he had finally found his place again, something he had not felt since the day Kate Argent burned his family alive in his old home. He’d started to take a more active interest in the goings on in town, and not just the werewolf or other supernatural types of happenings. He was paying attention, once again, to just the normal things that went on in Beacon Hills. For instance, today he had gone to the Beacon Hills High School lacrosse team fundraiser carwash and let a bunch of teenagers wash Laura’s Camaro. They were raising money to replace equipment that had been damaged in the school when ‘vandals’ (also known as the nogitsune) had gone on a spree and smashed a bunch of stuff up. It was a warm enough day still that a bunch of them were shirtless and cavorting around, having fun, hosing each other down as they washed the cars, and Derek could see that most of the clientele consisted of high school girls and even college age women there to ogle their naked flesh.

He sighed and shook his head. It was amazing to him just how young and carefree they were. He felt a thousand years older than they were, even though he wasn’t even in his mid-twenties. It was also amazing to him to see Scott out there with his teammates, and Scott was all smiles and sunny disposition again, even though Derek knew for sure just how heartbroken he had been after Allison’s death. Hell, even Derek had been shocked and upset by the loss of Allison. He might not have been her packmate, and she might not have had the cleanest hands in the world, but she had still been a young girl, cut down before she could have made something of herself. She had already been trying to make herself and the remaining Argent family of hunters into something more than just outright killers of any and all werewolves. Not like her Aunt Kate, and not like her grandfather Gerard either. Despite the fact that they hadn’t still been in a romantic relationship, Scott had been devastated by her loss, the loss of his first love. Understandably so. But looking at him today, Derek could smell the chemosignals that he was giving off, and he was happy. Happy to be surrounded by his friends, his pack, and his town.

Derek wished that he could be more like Scott and be able to shrug off the pain, or push it into a compartment, or whatever it was that Scott did to cope, because Derek had fallen apart after his family died, and he still wasn’t entirely sure that he had been put back together again. He really wasn’t. But being able to just see his mother in her wolf form, leaping onto the Nemeton stump in that dream thing he had, had somehow fixed something that had been broken inside him for a long time. He hadn’t been able to have a conversation with her, per se, but he had understood what her message was, and he felt at peace with himself again. As if he knew who he was again. He felt more himself now than, probably since before Paige died and his eyes turned blue, so he was feeling like he could maybe find a way to be OK again, despite all the losses that he had suffered.

He took a deep breath, watching as Scott laughed at something Stiles said and sprayed water on his friend. Stiles threw his head back and laughed, tossing the sudsy sponge at that idiot Greenberg that seemed to be the butt of every joke that day. He was about to turn away, not wanting to admire the graceful column of Stiles’ neck – because he knew just how inappropriate that was, Stiles was only seventeen for gods’ sakes – but when Scott glanced away from Stiles, his attention caught by someone else, Derek could see Stiles somehow deflate. Derek didn’t quite know how he did it but Stiles’ body language suddenly changed, from light and laughter and happiness to what seemed to him to be abject despair.

He frowned and carefully sniffed the air. Stiles smelled really sad now, too. He wondered why Scott hadn’t noticed it. But he imagined that it must be really difficult to pay attention to something as subtle as chemosignals when one was a bitten wolf. It was something he’d grown up with and never not been aware of, something he couldn’t not pay attention to since it made up a lot of how he and his family had communicated. It was an efficient way to convey emotions without requiring words, and really difficult to mask, too. Derek was himself, still shit at masking his own chemosignals even though he had good control of his facial expressions and could hide his feelings from humans. It had also been a pain in the ass, chemosignals, when he was a teenager trying to hide things from his alpha mom.

He tried not to be too obvious about it, but he stared at Stiles, trying to scrutinize him and see if he could tell how the boy was doing. Stiles had allowed his hair to grow out of the ridiculous buzzcut that he had sported back when Derek first met the boy, and Derek had to admit that it was a good look on him. But it was wet now and plastered to his head, as was the long sleeved athletic undershirt that he wore. He was one of the few boys out there that had chosen to keep his shirt on, and Derek had to think to himself, had he ever seen Stiles shirtless? And he would have to say that no, he had not. Unlike all the other people around him, and unlike most born wolves for whom nudity was really not that big a deal, Derek had never seen Stiles anything but fully clothed, shirt and all. He was usually dressed in several layers, in fact, a t-shirt, a plaid shirt, and a hoodie over all of that. It was a hot day that day, and they were washing cars, and yet, Stiles had kept his shirt on. Derek had to wonder why that was, because he knew that he and a bunch of the girls waiting in line to get their cars washed, wouldn’t have minded seeing more of Stiles’ flesh bared.

He could practically hear Stiles calling him a creeper and other names, and he hid a smile behind his hand. But he continued to pay attention to Stiles.

When Scott looked at him, Stiles was all smiles and projecting happiness, and even though his scent wasn’t exactly happy, it wasn’t quite as bitter and acrid with sadness and despair. But when Scott’s attention was not on him, the smell of sadness was so strong coming from him that it made Derek want to sneeze. He knew that it had only been a couple of weeks since the nogitsune had been expelled from Stiles (or rather, it had been Stiles vomited out of the nogitsune, if one wanted to be technical about it) and the losses that they had suffered – Allison and Aiden, to name just a couple – were still fresh, but there seemed to be something almost fragile about Stiles now. He didn’t look like he had regained the weight he had lost during the ordeal with the nogitsune. There were still dark circles under his eyes, and he looked as if he was still sick, the way the nogitsune had made him look just a few weeks ago.

Derek knew that Stiles had paid a huge and terrible price to rid himself of the fox demon, and that they hadn’t even been sure that he would survive if the nogitsune was killed, but he’d lived. He’d apparently just fainted after the nogitsune crumbled into dust and the fly captured in the box made out of wood from the Nemeton and everyone had assumed that he would be fine, that he _was_ fine. but looking at him now, Derek had to wonder if they had made that assumption without any proof.

He waited until his car had been washed, dried, and polished, before he gravely gave his thanks and dropped an extra hundred in the tip jar and drove off, deciding that he should maybe take a short detour and talk to the sheriff to see if the elder Stilinski might have some idea what was going on with his son. He could tell that Scott wasn’t fully aware of what was happening. Derek told himself that he owed it to Scott, the Alpha, to ensure that the Beacon Hills pack was strong and sound, and Stiles was an essential member of the Beacon Hills pack. It wasn’t that Derek was concerned for Stiles because it was _Stiles_ , and Stiles was special to him. Nope. Not at all. He glanced at his own reflection in the rearview mirror and decided not to think about that.

He parked in the visitor lot and walked into the station, asking the uniformed officer at the front desk if he could steal a few minutes of the sheriff’s time. Beyond the front desk in the inner office, he could see a few deputies working and he nodded to them absently. The sheriff station hadn’t been spared during the ordeal of the past few weeks, either, what with the bomb detonating there and the oni, once co-opted by the nogitsune, had been sent there to attack them.

Derek leaned against the wall in the waiting area while the deputy went to check with the sheriff, and he could see the bench to which he and Chris Argent had been handcuffed after the nogitsune framed them for the murder of a member of the Yakuza, the one known as Silverfinger, thus manipulating things such that they would be there at the station when the bomb detonated. Good times. Although it had been a turning point in his relationship with the hunter. He had instinctively covered Argent’s body with his own and taken the brunt of the blast. He was a werewolf after all, he could take it and heal. But later, when the nogitsune had taken control of him and he’d gone to burn Chris Argent alive in his apartment in retaliation for what Kate had done to his family, Argent had spared him and not just pulled the trigger like he was a rabid dog.

Chris Argent had treated him as if he was a human being who had been possessed, someone who was a person not acting like himself, and not just an animal to be put down. Chris Argent had told him that he was not Derek’s enemy. Argent had had every right to pull the trigger of the gun that he had shoved under Derek’s throat that night, but he hadn’t, because for once in his life he had seen that Derek was a person. A human, no matter what extras he might have been born with. And that Derek was not behaving like he normally did. He’d known that Derek wasn’t himself, and yet he hadn’t just pulled the trigger and justified Derek’s death by saying that it was kill or be killed, which technically, had been the case. He’d instead given Derek every chance to come back to himself, and luckily, Derek had. It was the beginning of a different kind of truce between the two of them, one based on mutual respect and not mutually assured destruction, the way it had been before.

A few minutes later, Sheriff Stilinski poked his head out the doorway of his office and gestured to Derek to come in, and treading carefully, Derek walked into the man’s office. It wasn’t exactly comfortable to be back where he had been on the other side of the law numerous times. The sheriff closed the door behind him and nodded to a chair.

Derek sat and Stilinski sat across the desk from him.

“What can I do for you, Derek?” Stilinski asked. He looked and smelled exhausted and worried.

Derek took a moment, at a loss for words. He wasn’t good with words to begin with, and expressing concern was a new thing for him, at least, not when something wasn’t trying to kill them. He sighed. “I’m not sure how to say it,” he murmured.

“Is everything OK?” the kindness that Stilinski exuded, the concern that came from him, was almost too much for Derek.

“I was kind of wondering the same thing about… Stiles?” Derek finally got out.

“Stiles? Why? Is he alright? Did something happen?” Stilinski’s concern was immediately turned up to eleven.

“Nothing happened,” Derek was quick to assure him. “But he doesn’t seem… he’s not himself, is he?”

The sheriff sighed and leaned back in his chair. “What makes you say that?”

“I can smell it,” Derek said. “He still smells really sad, unless he’s putting on a brave face for Scott.”

The older man sighed again and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Why can _you_ smell it but not Scott?” he wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Derek shrugged. “Maybe because Scott was bitten, and I’m a born wolf? Maybe Scott is around Stiles so much that it just smells like Stiles to him, and I haven’t been around them that much so I can smell it better?”

“Maybe Scott doesn’t want to smell it,” Stilinski said softly.

“He does prefer to ignore things that make him uncomfortable at times,” Derek said diplomatically.

The sheriff snorted at that. “Well, to be fair, so does my son.”

Derek had to nod his agreement. Denial all the way, that was how Stiles was. “What’s going on with Stiles?” he asked.

Stilinski blew out a long breath. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “But he’s still having nightmares, bad ones, where he screams himself awake. Loud enough to wake me, too, if I’m home. He’s still sleepwalking. And that’s _if_ he even gets any sleep at all. I’m not sure how often he eats because he’s still all skin and bones. He’s back in school and he pretends like he’s fine, but he’s not.”

“Is it the nogitsune? Is it not all the way gone?”

“We’ve gone to Noshiko and the oni have checked him out again, you know, just in case?” Stilinski’s eyes saddened at that. “He’s got matching marks on both sides of his neck, certifying that he is still himself. And a day in bed to recover from that test. It took a lot out of him.”

“Is he fooling the oni? Is he still not himself?” Derek frowned.

“He’s himself, but he’s not… well. Not healthy. He’s sick or something. And I can’t get him to go to the hospital again,” Stilinski sighed. “He just won’t go there. He blames himself for all the damage and the deaths that happened there. Just like how he won’t come here to the station, either.”

“He’s not responsible for _any_ of it,” Derek said fiercely.

“Try telling him that,” Stilinski pursed his lips. “He won’t listen to me when I tell him that. He doesn’t believe Scott, either. Or Lydia. He blames himself for everything that the nogitsune did.”

“But he didn’t do any of it. The nogitsune did.”

“I know that,” Stilinski agreed.

“And what does Scott say about this?”

“Not much,” Stilinski made a face. “Stiles is good at hiding things from people and he’s hiding it from Scott.”

“Have you talked to Scott?”

“Stiles has asked me not to worry him. He doesn’t want to add to Scott’s burden, especially given Allison’s death. He feels responsible for her.”

Derek snorted. “Stiles didn’t kill Allison.”

“Maybe not, but he remembers a lot of it, Derek. He remembers doing all those terrible things, he remembers how the nogitsune made him feel…”

Derek sighed. He knew what it was to live with misplaced guilt. Kate Argent might have been the one to kill his family, but he had been the weak link. He had been the idiot so in love with a woman that was way out of his league, so blind to the fact that there was no way a woman as mature and beautiful as she was would have been in any way shape or form attracted to a traumatized fifteen-year-old boy. He should have known it but he’d been so consumed by not just losing Paige, but how she had died, how she had begged him to kill her, how he had been the one to end her life rather than prolong her suffering. He couldn’t see the truth about Kate. And his mother had been trying to give him space to recover from his loss that maybe she had given him too much space and not seen how he had become a vulnerability for the pack. How he had been the one to let the hunter into their house.

It had taken him years and he still blamed himself for their deaths, most days, but he was slowly coming to understand that all that guilt that he carried, that he still shouldered, not all of it was his to bear. He had not been the one to murder eleven – no, ten, since Cora was safely back in South America again – ten people while they slept. That had been Kate. He had been used and abused, and now that he was older, he could see how what she had done to him had been wrong. He had been young and sad, and she had taken advantage of that. She had taken advantage of _him_. He didn’t like to use the terminology, but technically given his age at the time and the fact that he had been legally unable to give his consent, she had raped him and then murdered his family. He had not deserved that and his family had not deserved that. No one deserved to be murdered like that. Kate was a psychopath. And now, in hindsight, Derek couldn’t see any way that he would have been able to resist her charms, given just how lost he had been back then. He had been ripe for her to fuck with, and the blame should like with her, and not with him. Logically, he knew that, but he was still working on believing that. So yeah, he knew about misplaced guilt.

“I’ll see if I can speak to him,” Derek told the sheriff.

“Yeah,” the older man nodded. “Yeah, it might help if you did. In his chess game, it wasn’t Scott who was the king. It was you.”

Derek felt a twinge of something go through him – was it pride? Fear? Concern? Maybe all three. That he had been the label on the king chess piece. “I don’t know why that was,” he frowned.

“Son, I have never been able to truly understand what goes on in Stiles’ head,” Stilinski shook his head, smiling sadly. “Not even when he was a baby. Other kids had much simpler needs, but Stiles? He always marched to his own drumbeat. He took after his mother that way.”

Derek nodded. “I’ll check in with him.”

“Will you let me know if there’s something I should know about?” Stilinski asked, concern and fear for his son naked in his voice and in his eyes.

“I will,” Derek nodded.

“I don’t think he’s OK,” Stilinski admitted reluctantly. “He might be his own person again, but I don’t think he’s recovering from what the nogitsune did to him. Not that I can see.”

Derek had to think about that for a moment. Why wouldn’t Stiles have healed from the nogitsune? It had been defeated and contained. When Noshiko, Kira’s 900-year-old kitsune mother had done the same thing and trapped it in the Nemeton, the nogitsune had been imprisoned. It stopped terrorizing Beacon Hills, and it seemed as if the threat had been neutralized and the city recovered once again. Why was Stiles not recovering then?

“What does Noshiko have to say about it?” Derek asked.

“She doesn’t know,” he shrugged. “In her experience, the host never survives when the nogitsune is expelled and banished.”

“Never?”

“Not ever,” Stilinski reiterated solemnly.

“So, we don’t know how it might have affected Stiles, having survived being possessed by a nogitsune?”

The sheriff nodded.

Derek grunted. “I’ll see what I can do, Sheriff,” he stood and turned to leave.

“Hey, Derek,” Stilinski’s tone was hesitant, so Derek turned back, raising his eyebrows in question. The sheriff had his hand held out to him, and surprised, Derek took it and shook the man’s hand. “I just wanted to thank you for caring about Stiles. I know he didn’t make the best first impression on you.”

Derek gave him a small smile. “He has a way of… burrowing through your defenses.”

Stilinski chuckled at that, and Derek immediately felt as if he had done something right. The sheriff nodded his agreement. “He definitely does that.”

With another nod at the sheriff, Derek turned and departed, going back into his newly washed car and wondering how on earth he would approach Stiles. In the past, he would just climb in through Stiles’ window and scared the shit out of the boy, and the combination of fear, anger and arousal that he always seemed to get out of Stiles did amuse him, even back when all he was was pain and anger walking around in a mostly-human form. But surely he couldn’t do that to Stiles anymore, especially if he wasn’t feeling well.

He drove aimlessly through town, wondering what to do for a while before he made up his mind and turned towards the Stilinski residence.


	2. Chapter Two: Stiles

**Chapter Two: Stiles**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

Stiles Stilinski was exhausted. He kept his head down and his hands in the pockets of his hoodie as he trudged from the jeep to his front door. He was experiencing tremors in his hands and he couldn’t control them, they just wouldn’t stop, and since he would rather not think about it or look at them, he kept his hands in his pockets. Out of sight, out of mind, right? He let himself into the house, closed and locked the door behind him, and without even glancing towards the kitchen, dragged himself slowly up the stairs and to his bedroom.

He let out a long breath as he stepped into his room, automatically elbowing his door shut, and fell, face down, onto his bed, the backpack that had been hanging off one shoulder thumping onto the bed next to him. Gods, but he wished that he could get some real sleep. He was beyond drained. He wasn’t even sure how the hell he was managing to get through the day without keeling over, but despite being one hundred and forty-seven pounds of pale skin and fragile bone, he was not weak. Well, maybe physically he might be, but mentally, he had more grit and willpower than anyone ever gave him credit for. He was not going to let Scott down again, and he wasn’t going to make anyone worry about him. The pack had wasted enough time and lost enough lives trying to save him once. He was not going to put them through any of that, ever again.

He closed his eyes and tried to relax his body, but now that he was on the bed, it seemed as if his entire body was starting to tremble. Shit, why was it so fucking cold in the house all the time? Stiles thought about crawling under the covers and trying to warm himself up before he got up and started on unending task of homework but even moving two feet up the bed so he could get under the covers was too much for him, the distance and effort too great. Instead, he curled into a fetal ball, his teeth chattering as he curled up as tightly as he could to try and conserve heat.

Fuck, he was pathetic. This was exactly how the nogitsune had tormented him, by making him cold, and doing everything it could to force Stiles into letting him in. Stiles was ashamed to admit to himself that even though he wanted to think of himself as being mentally strong, he was actually weak. He had succumbed to the nogitsune. He had let that being in, and he had allowed it to control him and use him to hurt everyone around him. He had not been strong enough to resist, and people had died.

It would have been better for Stiles if he had died along with the nogitsune that day. He knew what loss felt like, he knew how death affected everyone around him, how his mother’s death had affected his father. But he knew that if he had died, then his father would have been alone. His father would have had to figure out how to go on living without Stiles. He knew that his father would take to the bottle again – the past was prologue, after all – and who knew where that would end up, given that this time around, the sheriff wouldn’t have Stiles there to look after him and give him a reason to go on, certainly he might feel like he had no reason to take care of himself. So, even though it hurt Stiles – a lot – to keep on living, there was no way he was going to abandon his father. He’d gone through enough with losing Stiles’ mother. He couldn’t put his father through the loss of the only family he had left. Stiles would just have to suck it up and carry on. _After_ he laid there for a moment, that was. He needed a short break. Washing cars for the fundraiser had taken a lot out of him and being wet for a few hours had not helped him to feel any warmer.

After a couple of minutes, he sighed and began uncurling himself, trying not to whimper as he did it. His muscles were cramping or something and that full body ache that he had been experiencing ever since the nogitsune separated them into two people, that had not gone away with the fox demon, well it was in full force at that moment.

As he moved, he felt gentle hands on him and he scrambled away in shock. He would forever deny that he screamed like a little girl when it happened.

“It’s me,” a familiar voice told him.

“Derek?” Stiles gawked at the werewolf, wondering what the hell he was doing in Stiles’ room again. It felt like it had been months since Derek had even had a conversation alone with Stiles, never mind creeperwolfed his way into his room. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Came to talk to you,” Derek stood, his hands tucked into the pocket of his jeans and Stiles had to wonder how he could do that, given just how tight those fucking things were. Although it did seem as if Derek were wearing more relaxed fit jeans, compared to when Stiles first met him. Derek wore more colors now, too, instead of always wearing black. The Henley he was currently wearing was a sage green and the jeans were a faded blue instead of black.

“To me? Is something going on?” Stiles immediately perked up. “You need me to research something?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “No, nothing is going on. No research needed.”

“No strange dead bodies?”

“Nope.”

“No unexplained occurrences?”

“Nope,” Derek was becoming exasperated.

“No ‘animal attacks’?” Stiles made the air quotes with his hands, knowing how annoying it would be.

“No, Stiles,” Derek growled. “I just wanted to talk to you a minute.”

“And nothing’s happened?” Stiles frowned. He didn’t understand what was going on. Why was Derek here? And why wasn’t he being pinned to the wall and frightened out of his wits? Wasn’t that how he and Derek got along?

“No, Stiles,” Derek rolled his eyes.

Suddenly, Stiles had to wonder just how long Derek had been in the room. Had he seen Stiles all curled up and at his most vulnerable? Was that why he sounded almost… gentle?

“Why aren’t you being your usual Sourwolf self?” he asked, knowing that he sounded suspicious but well, he _was_ suspicious. Derek was behaving strangely un-Derek like.

Derek sighed, but this time it sounded pained.

“Is everything all right?” Stiles was immediately concerned, putting a hand on Derek’s shoulder. Maybe something was going on with Derek and Stiles was the one being insensitive? But his fingers trembled, out of his control, and he pulled his hand away, stuffing them back in his hoodie pocket.

“Will you sit?” Derek pointed to the bed. “I don’t want you to fall over. You look like a feather would blow you over.”

“ _Hey!_ ” Stiles objected. It was the first time in weeks that Stiles had any alone time with Derek – not that he meant it _that_ way – and he was just going to stand there and insult him? Although a Derek that was insulting him, a snarky Derek, was more normal for Stiles.

Derek’s hands were gentle as he pushed Stiles into a sitting position on the bed. Then he sat in Stiles’ computer chair, swiveling so he faced the boy. Stiles had to take a moment to admire the grace with which the ‘wolf moved. Derek was poetry in motion, the epitome of the sexy beast, and although they had started off poorly, things had gotten better between them. Derek was one of the few people that Stiles would trust his father’s life with. Despite him trying hard not to be, Derek was one of the good guys. He’d come back to help them and he didn’t sit out the nogitsune ordeal, even if it would have been easier for him to do that. He hadn’t even been involved with that whole mess initially, but he’d come when Scott called. Without him, Stiles would still be the nogitsune, and things would be so much worse.

“I got my car washed today,” Derek told him.

“I didn’t wash your camaro,” Stiles raised his hands in denial, “so if someone broke something or scratched the car, or whatever, it absolutely was not me.”

Derek’s lips quirked up in a grin. “Good to know,” he said, and Stiles was struck by just how soothing Derek’s voice really was. Despite the bad boy image that he cultivated, Derek was soft-spoken and well, he had a sweetness about him that only made him that much more attractive.

“I’m just saying,” Stiles reiterated.

“Yeah, I got it,” Derek rolled his eyes. “What I’m saying is that I saw you there, Stiles.”

“Uh, OK?” Stiles frowned, confused. “I mean, I was there. It really was me. There’s only one of me now, we checked. In fact, you know, we even double checked. I went to Kira’s mom after the… the nog… the demon was trapped in the box, again, you know? Just in case anything escaped or was left behind inside me? And I’m free and clear,” he showed Derek the kanji character behind both of his ears, one done right after the nogitsune had separated them into two Stiles, and one after Scott bit Void Stiles and the nogitsune had been trapped in the box made of wood from the Nemeton. That second time had been especially painful and had taken a _lot_ out of him.

“I know,” Derek sighed, and now he looked serious and maybe a little worried. Stiles wasn’t quite sure what was going on but he was getting the feeling that he was not going to like it, whatever it was. “Look, I don’t know how to say this…”

“OK? Well, then maybe we can just you know, stop talking,” Stiles suggested, making a face. “I mean, I have homework to do, but we can watch a movie or something instead? Always stuff in my Netflix queue to watch.”

“This is important, Stiles.”

Stiles sighed. “I’m listening,” he murmured. “What’s going on? Are you leaving town again?”

“No,” Derek frowned. “I have no plans to leave town.”

“So, you’re sticking around to help Scott defend Beacon Hills? Like he told me you said you would?”

Derek nodded. “I’m not planning on leaving Beacon Hills.”

“OK,” Stiles didn’t know why but the quick and confident response reassured him and comforted him. For whatever reason, he felt like if Derek was around, then things would turn out OK for him. Scott was awesome, his brother, whatever, but Scott had a penchant for paying attention to his girlfriend way more than caring about a long-standing friendship at times. Oh, he was amazing and Stiles loved him more than life itself, but he had his moments, where Stiles really wished he could just smack some sense into the man. But that was who Scott was and he loved Scott the way he was. 

Besides, Scott had not given up on him and allowed people to kill him just to take out the nogitsune. Scott was his _brother_. He wasn’t criticizing Scott. Not really. But Derek was solid. Derek, when you were able to convince him to be on your side, he was a staunch, solid ally. Stiles wouldn’t have to worry about him secretly colluding with Gerard Argent behind his back or hanging up on him if he was about to drown in a pool while a kanima stalked around it and he called for help. Derek would never just turn away from him when they were facing the next, dangerous big bad, because some girl was more interesting than the life-or-death situation that they were facing. He never had, and if he did, then you could be sure that someone had probably captured the poor bastard and was torturing the bejesus out of him, preventing him from coming to Stiles’ rescue, thus precipitating the need for Stiles to mount the rescue instead.

“Stiles, did Scott tell you that I’m teaching him how to interpret chemosignals?” Derek’s voice pulled him out of his train of thought.

“Uh-huh,” Stiles nodded. Chemosignals – werewolves were able to scent emotions out of people. Cool, and hello, invasive? Stiles didn’t want to know what Derek could smell from him in the past, especially since he hadn’t exactly disliked being manhandled by the man.

“That’s why I’m here.”

“Because Scott smells off?” Stiles was immediately concerned. “He seemed OK to me, I mean, you know, not great, not that I can smell chemosignals. But I do know him, have known him for years. He’s coping, but you know, I did kill the love of his life in cold blood. But…”

“You didn’t kill anyone, Stiles,” Derek growled at him.

“Ummm… I’m pretty sure I did,” Stiles had to disagree.

“No, you did not,” each word was spit out with anger. “The oni under the nogitsune’s control did it.”

“I killed her,” Stiles insisted. “The nogitsune was me when it happened.”

“So, you _wanted_ to kill Allison?”

“Well, no…” Stiles had to look away. “Of _course_ not. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Well, maybe Scott’s dad, but he’s a douche, so whatever. The oni stabbed him under Noshiko’s control. Not mine. That one was actually _not_ my fault.”

“ _None_ of it was your fault. You weren’t in control, Stiles,” Derek cupped his face and moved him so Stiles was back looking into Derek’s pale eyes, and even though Stiles was used to Derek manhandling him, this time the movement was careful. Derek was not trying to hurt him. In fact, maybe Derek was trying hard to do the opposite of that. “It wasn’t you. You are not at fault.”

“Sure,” Stiles looked down, unable to keep gazing into those caring, concerned eyes.

Intellectually and logically, he understood what Derek was saying, but he knew, in his bones, that he had been the one to cause all that harm. He might have been the vessel, but what the nogitsune wanted, chaos and strife and pain, he could actually understand that. There were so many days when all he wanted to do was lash out and hurt the people who seemed to always keep hurting him. The nogitsune had maybe only stripped away the inhibitions that had stopped him before. And look what Stiles, without inhibitions, look at what he wrought. It was unbelievable just how awful a person he was, he must be, deep down.

“You smelled off at the car wash today, Stiles,” Derek kept his hand on Stiles’ face and waited until the young man raised his eyes and met his again. “I’m here because you smelled sad and guilty and tired. I’m here because I’m worried about you. And you still reek of so much guilt, I don’t even know how you’re still standing.”

Stiles snorted at that. He wondered the same thing about himself just about every second that he was awake, and since he wasn’t actually sleeping much, he did ask himself that question a lot. But yes. Willpower. The force is strong with this one, OK? Stiles was not going to just lie down and give up, thank you very much.

Derek looked at him, really looked at him and Stiles struggled to contain the shiver that went through him. He had always been drawn to Derek, even before he knew anything about Derek. Even from the first time Stiles saw him in the Preserve, telling them they were on private property, Stiles hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away from the man. Back then he was so pale skinned and dressed all in black. Not that Derek had stopped wearing black, because he still did, but he didn’t quite have the look of a guy that hadn’t seen sunlight in years anymore. Stiles would have guessed vampire before werewolf based on Derek’s appearance when they first met. Now, he had a healthy looking tan, and his scruff was as sexy and groomed as ever.

“It’s not your guilt to bear,” Derek said softly.

“Then whose is it?” Stiles growled. “Whose fault is it, if it isn’t mine?”

“Any number of people other than a skinny seventeen-year-old kid,” Derek snapped back.

“Oh yeah? Like who?”

“Like Noshiko, for bringing down hell on earth because she wanted to avenge the wrongs that had been done to her and her people,” Derek’s answer was quick. “ _She_ brought this demon to Beacon Hills, and even though she stopped it seventy years ago, she didn’t stick around to make sure that the nogitsune would never return. She didn’t stay and guard this town after she had unleashed this thing on us. She should’ve stayed and watched over the Nemeton, she should have made sure that the prison was impenetrable, but she didn’t.”

Stiles gaped at Derek. Where the hell was all this coming from?

“And then, there’s whoever cut the Nemeton down in the first place, because that was one hell of a mistake to make. The Nemeton was guarding the town, and with the Nemeton gone and the Hale pack decimated and exiled, it made this town vulnerable. It weakened the prison that trapped the nogitsune.”

Stiles had to frown at the apparent logic in Derek’s statements. He couldn’t refute any of it, not really.

“Maybe even Deaton,” Derek murmured softly, looking contemplative now.

“Deaton?” Stiles knew that he was gaping, but he couldn’t help himself. “Why the hell would you blame Deaton?”

“He did the ceremony, with the ice and the bathtub,” Derek pursed his lips.

“But we _asked_ him to do it. We needed to find our parents. I couldn’t let my dad die, Derek,” Stiles said hotly.

“I get that,” Derek’s expression was intense. But when wasn’t it, though? The dude was one hell of an intense guy. “But why didn’t Deaton know that this door had been opened within you? Why didn’t Deaton figure out that this would leave you vulnerable to the attacks of the nogitsune or who knows what else that exists that could possess any one of the three of you? And why didn’t he realize that this and whatever the hell it was that fucking darach did would even further weaken the Nemeton and free the nogitsune?”

“Well, I mean…” Stiles bit his lip. “Maybe he just didn’t anticipate it?”

“If nothing else, he should have researched it and found out what the aftereffects would have been for you,” Derek said fiercely. “He opened the damned door in your mind, he should have been working to find a way to close it after we found your parents and defeated both the Alpha pack and the darach. Instead, he just stepped back and let things unfold.”

Stiles pulled the hoodie string into his mouth and began chewing on it. “But… he’s Deaton.”

“He was my mother’s emissary,” the sadness bled into Derek’s voice now, “but yet the members of our pack didn’t know him. I don’t know if Laura even knew about him. My pack died and he did nothing. He didn’t help Laura. He didn’t help me. He didn’t help Peter. Peter was here under his nose for years and he did _nothing_.”

“He helped Scott,” Stiles argued.

“Has he, though?” Derek shrugged. “The way I remember it, you were the one who helped Scott when he was bitten. Deaton should have helped, but he didn’t. He’s been cryptic. He gives you half-truths and hints at solutions rather than truly giving you and Scott help.”

“That’s just how he is,” Stiles reasoned.

“Maybe. But if druids are supposed to maintain the balance, then why are things so unbalanced here in Beacon Hills?” Derek asked softly. “I don’t think he’s a bad man. I think he intends to do good. But I remember my mother’s old emissary, the one we had before Deaton, and she was someone we all knew and loved. She lived with us. She was part of our family. After she died, I knew that my mother had found a new emissary but it was just all so secretive. We didn’t know who he was, and we didn’t know anything about him. Why did it have to be like that? Our emissary from before was also a druid and she didn’t hide from our pack. She _was_ pack. We all knew her.”

“I just figured that all emissaries operate in the shadows,” Stiles mumbled.

“No,” Derek shook his head. “They’re mostly not shadowy and secretive. Emissaries are also pack members and pack takes care of pack… Hold on a second. I feel like this conversation has been derailed.”

“I have no idea, dude,” Stiles grinned at him. “This has got to be the most words you’ve ever uttered in your life to anyone.”

“Don’t make me punch your face in,” Derek responded automatically.

Surprisingly, a laugh bubbled out of Stiles at that. “Fuck, Derek,” he chuckled, trying to catch his breath. “Don’t be such a Sourwolf.”

Derek shook his head. “The point I was trying to make is that things happen, Stiles,” he spoke quietly. “Sometimes it’s really awful and really bad and you wish that you would have died with them because living without them is the worst punishment ever.”

Stiles was shocked into silence now, knowing that Derek was talking about his own family now. He was speaking about his own feelings. His own loss. Derek never spoke to anyone about his dead family, but whatever the hell the dude had been smoking must have really been good for him, because even though he seemed sad, he had let go of a lot of the anger that had been fueling him in the past.

“But you didn’t kill anyone,” Derek told him, his almost unnaturally light eyes serious. “You didn’t kill anyone. The nogitsune did. Blame the demon, don’t blame yourself. You wouldn’t have done any of those things. I know you, and you would not have done this. Not in a million years. This was not your fault.”

Derek’s conviction was infectious. Stiles almost believed that he wasn’t to blame. He wanted to believe Derek when he said it, and he’d brushed away everyone else’s assurances. He didn’t know why but these words, coming from Derek, meant more to him somehow.

“I don’t know…” Stiles shrugged.

“I _do_ know,” Derek told him. “I’m going to keep telling you this until you believe me.”

Stiles snorted at that. The Sourwolf was apparently going to voluntarily talk to him and keep telling him stuff? He had to wonder how much it hurt the guy to have been so verbal. So many words. Stiles didn’t quite know how to take it.

“What happened to your family wasn’t your fault either, you know?” Stiles ventured. Because it was true. Kate had been fucked up and insane and Derek had been victimized enough.

Derek shrugged. “We’re talking about you right now.”

Stiles rolled his eyes.

Derek gave him a curious look. “Did you know that your stomach has been growling this entire time.”

Stiles looked down at his belly, surprised. He just didn’t notice things like hunger very often anymore. Too many things were going on in his body at once for him to pay attention to something as trivial as hunger. “Are you changing the subject on purpose?” Stiles asked.

“When was the last time you ate?” Derek was looking him up and down critically, and Stiles flushed with embarrassment. He was a hot mess. Not that Derek would ever look at him and think, hmm, he wanted to get all up in that, but Stiles knew that he was definitely not putting his best face on right now.

“Stiles?” Derek’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts. “When did you last eat?”

Stiles screwed up his face and thought for a moment. “Ummm… yesterday? Maybe?” Seriously? Could it be that he had last eaten at lunch the previous day? Now he hoped that it was yesterday and not the day before.

Derek made an exasperated noise. “Let’s go,” he grabbed Stiles’ arm and dragged him upright. He picked up Stiles keys, stuffed it in his pocket, and taking Stiles’ wrist, he pulled the unresisting Stiles down to his Camaro and pushed him into the passenger seat.

“Where are we going?” Stiles asked.

“To eat,” Derek rolled his eyes.

“But…”

“Curly fries are best piping hot,” Derek started his car and backed out of the driveway.

“Did you just say curly fries, dude?” Stiles felt himself brightening up at the thought of curly fries.

“Don’t call me dude,” Derek snapped grumpily at him.

“Why? What are you going to do to me if I do? Rip my throat out?”

“With my teeth,” Derek snarked back, his tone casual.

Stiles had to laugh at that, and he relaxed into the passenger seat, letting Derek take him wherever. “You’re buying, dude,” he told the werewolf, and laughed again when Derek snorted in mock disgust.

He might not be hungry, but he could maybe eat a few curly fries. See how they sat in his belly. Besides, it felt really good to have Derek’s attention and to have Derek care about him like this. Stiles couldn’t help but soak it all up and whatever it was Derek was doing, it was causing there to be some sort of thawing inside him. He didn’t feel quite so frozen with cold anymore. There was a small, warm patch heating up his core, somewhere in the vicinity of his heart. He wasn’t going to complain about that.


	3. Chapter Three: Derek

**Chapter Three: Derek**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

Derek wasn’t entirely sure how it happened, but he was somehow sitting across from Stiles Stilinski at the old Hale pack’s favorite diner. Derek had avoided this place like the plague since his return to Beacon Hills, when he came looking for Laura after not hearing from her for too long. He’d felt the pack bond with her break on his way back, he’d known it when she died. He had not even been able to look at the diner for a long time upon his return. But here he was, sitting across the booth from Stiles and he couldn’t help but grin at the young man’s sarcastic banter. Stiles even smelled more normal now; Adderall, nervousness, amusement, contentment, and underlying it a layer of arousal. Derek liked it when Stiles didn’t smell of despair and exhaustion, the way he had earlier that evening.

Derek could tell that this wasn’t Stiles putting on a brave front. This was Stiles actually enjoying himself. Sure, he wasn’t wolfing down his curly fries or cheeseburger the way that Derek expected him to – he still was a growing boy after all. But he was eating some of it, and he was on his third cup of hot chocolate. Derek would count it as a win, if he’d last eaten over twenty-four hours ago.

After they ate, Derek drove him home and stayed to watch a movie with him on the boy’s bed. Stiles didn’t make it even halfway through the movie before he fell asleep, so Derek paused the show. He moved off the bed, shut the laptop and placed it on Stiles’ desk, then took a moment to pull the covers out from under the sleeping boy and pull it snugly over Stiles’ body. He put his hand on Stiles’ forehead, and frowned at how cold his skin felt. Gently, he brushed the soft strands of Stiles’ hair off his forehead and Stiles sighed, leaning into his touch, lips quirking up into a small smile.

“Good night,” Derek whispered. Stiles murmured something unintelligible, and Derek had to shake his head at the fact that the boy was of course, someone who would attempt to speak, even when he was asleep. Not at all surprising, really. And sort of endearing. But don’t tell anyone that Derek thought that. He had a reputation to maintain.

He jumped out of Stiles’ window, even though he knew that these days the sheriff wouldn’t bat an eyelid at Derek using the front door, but well, it was kind of nostalgic. It was how he had come into Stiles’ room the first time, last year. It felt like eons ago, but even back then, Stiles had been the one he had gone to for help and for information. He had entered Stiles’ room through the window earlier and waited for Stiles to come home. He’d witnessed Stiles’ quiet collapse and decided to stay in the shadows, to observe Stiles when he wasn’t trying to hide behind his snarkiness. He had almost been blown away by the guilt and sadness and sheer exhaustion that came off the boy.

He was glad that he’d managed to cheer him up somewhat with their conversation, and he had also been able to get some food in the boy. He was starting to look emaciated, and that bothered Derek. It wasn’t that Stiles had ever been anything but skinny, but now he was more skin and bones than ever and it bothered him that Stiles hadn’t even managed to eat all of his curly fries and had eaten only half his cheeseburger. Stiles might not be a werewolf and have the appetite of one, but he was a growing boy and Derek had seen him put away easily two cheeseburgers and two orders of fries on more than one occasion. It was worrying that he couldn’t even eat one burger after not eating for a day. And leftover curly fries was an impossibility before this. But at least he had eaten _some_ food. Derek would just have to come around more often and see if he could keep feeding the boy and helping him get some rest.

It became somewhat of a thing for the two of them, in the course of the next few days. Stiles would come home from school to find Derek lounging in his bed, reading a book, apparently waiting for him and they would order in or Derek would take him out to eat, and when they got back, Derek would go back to reading while Stiles did his homework, and when he was done with his schoolwork, they would get his laptop out and watch a show until Stiles fell asleep. More and more, the boy was relaxing and seemed to be less stressed around him. He’d fallen asleep with his head on Derek’s shoulder that night, and Derek had stayed far longer than he should have, because he didn’t want to wake Stiles when it was so obvious that he needed to sleep, and in all honesty, he had actually enjoyed it. He liked that Stiles trusted him enough to fall asleep and drool on his shoulder. Like he was part of Stiles’ pack.

Stiles started texting him throughout the day while he was at school, and even in the middle of the night when he woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. Derek knew that Stiles was not sleeping as much as a boy his age should, but he also knew that whatever he was getting now was a vast improvement on what it must have been before they started hanging out. Stiles seemed more alert now, his appetite was better, and his skin wasn’t quite as sickly pale as it had been even just a few days before that. Even Scott had noticed the difference and taken Derek aside to look him in the eye and sincerely extend his gratitude. Scott hadn’t been able to get through to Stiles. No matter what he said, no matter how many times Scott repeated that Stiles wasn’t at fault, he hadn’t been able to believe Scott. The alpha was pleased that Stiles was at least responding to someone, even if it wasn’t him.

Derek took the praise and let it warm him up inside. It had been a long time since an alpha was happy with him. He might not officially be part of Scott’s pack, and he didn’t feel like just a beta, but praise from an alpha was always something that made a beta happy. There was a secret part of him that was also pleased that Stiles was responding to _him_ , and not to Scott. He didn’t know what it meant, but he was going to hold on to it.

One night, his phone rang and woke him up from a deep sleep.

“Hullo?” he croaked into the phone, voice still hoarse with sleep.

“Derek?” It was Sheriff Stilinski.

“Yeah?”

“Is Stiles with you?”

“Umm… no?” Derek sat up and sniffed his apartment, in case the boy managed to sneak into his loft without waking him up. Not that the chances of that was high, but stranger things had happened, and this was Beacon Hills. “No, just me here. Why?”

“I’m at work,” Stilinski sounded worried now. “I’ve been turning the motion detectors on when I work the night shift.”

“OK,” Derek nodded. He remembered that Stilinski had had the motion detectors installed while Stiles was sleepwalking and being possessed by the nogitsune.

“I know you’ve been hanging out with Stiles, feeding him, and getting him to get some sleep,” Stilinski continued.

Right. Because the motion detectors would have showed Derek’s visits with Stiles. That woke Derek the hell right up. He was suddenly extra glad that he wasn’t the same grumpy and at times physically abusive werewolf that he used to be and that he had been treating Stiles gently and appropriately at all times, even when the boy was sleeping on him.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you for that,” the sheriff went on. “He’s been sleeping maybe five or six hours a night since you’ve been staying with him until he sleeps. It’s making a huge difference. He was getting a lot less sleep before you started coming around again.”

“Umm… OK,” Derek tried not to feel too uncomfortable at the words. “But why did you call me at…” he checked the clock on his bedside table, “…3:00 AM to thank me?”

“No. I was hoping Stiles went to you,” Stilinski said.

“What happened?”

“The motion detectors went off, and I saw that Stiles woke up and left the house.”

“Is he on foot?” Derek pushed the covers aside and swung his feet onto the floor.

“No, Derek, he got in the Jeep. It’s not in the driveway.”

“Maybe he just went to get midnight snacks or something?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t do that anymore. Not without calling me first. Since the nogitsune, he knows I worry about him and he’ll call if he’s going to leave the house. He even calls when he’s leaving for school and sends me a text to confirm that he got there. Not that I’ve asked him to do it. I think it makes him feel better to know that someone knows about his comings and goings.”

“Yeah, I understand that.” Derek began pulling his clothes on. “You said that he was still sleepwalking.”

“Yeah, but it hasn’t been bad, you know? He just walks around the house or goes into the kitchen and tries to do things. Not like before.” Not like during the nogitsune when he was being controlled by the demon and he was doing far more complicated things like driving while he was asleep, the words were unsaid but Derek could hear them.

“Could he have been sleepwalking again tonight?”

“I mean, I guess,” Stilinski sighed.

“Could you tell if he was awake?” Derek jammed his feet into his boots and began lacing them, clutching the phone in between his shoulder and his chin.

“I can’t be sure,” the depth of the worry in the man’s voice was immeasurable. “I don’t know, Derek. I was hoping he just woke up and decided to go somewhere but no one has seen him. We haven’t found the Jeep and we haven’t found him.”

“Have you called Scott?”

“Yeah, he’s out looking for him now.”

“I’m on my way out to look for him now, Sheriff.”

“Call me if you find any sign of him,” the sheriff instructed him. “And seriously, Derek. Thanks. Thank you for helping.”

“He’s pack,” Derek’s explanation was simple and honest.

After he hung up, he called Scott to see where the alpha had looked, and he was apparently on his way to the site of the car wreck that had killed Malia’s mother and little sister. That was where Stiles had gone that time that the whole Beacon Hills Sheriff Department and the pack had lost him, that night that had been extremely cold.

It was still winter, and even though it wasn’t going to go down into the twenties tonight like it had that night, there was still the possibility of hypothermia. Derek knew that Stiles had been having trouble staying warm lately, maybe since after the nogitsune had been expelled. Derek stopped to pick up a blanket to bring with him, in case he found the boy. No doubt he would need more layers.

Derek was driving around, the windows down, trying to catch Stiles’ scent a few minutes later. Scott called to let him know that there was no sign of Stiles at the car wreck, and he had both Malia and Kira out looking as well. The girls had gone to the high school, in case Stiles went there. Malia would be able to sniff him out by scent. She was still more coyote than human, so she would be able to find Stiles if he had somehow found his way back to the school.

The sheriff called to let him know that Stiles’ jeep had been found, parked on the shoulder of the highway headed out of town. Stiles wasn’t there. Derek went straight there to see if he could pick up Stiles’ scent, while the sheriff was working with the deputies to get the canine unit out. He beat Scott there, so he parked his car and got out. Stiles’ scent was still fresh and Derek could easily follow it, despite the breeze that was blowing. It was cold out, as Derek had expected.

He brought the blanket with him and stood for a moment until he caught the sheriff’s eye. He jerked his head towards the woods and the sheriff acknowledged it with a hopeful nod. There were other deputies around and Derek didn’t want to say anything incriminating, but he stood for a moment, centering himself, breathing in the scent of Stiles coming from the open doorway of the familiar blue Jeep. He couldn’t pick out the normal scent of guilt, sadness and exhaustion that was normal for Stiles, not in the air. He smelled neutral somehow. He didn’t know quite what that meant, but he tucked the blanket under his arm and walked into the woods, keeping his pace normal since there were other people there. He didn’t want to wolf out or do anything that could be considered abnormal by human standards, so he quietly walked farther into the trees, deeper into the forest, until he was sure that no one would see him, before he let his fangs down and his eyes shone blue in the darkness. He could use his senses better when he was semi-shifted like this. Not even a full beta shift, he just needed the partial beta shift to access his full ‘wolf sense of smell.

The scent Stiles left was surprisingly easy for him to follow. It wafted in the breeze, smelling peaceful and maybe even a little sweet. Derek didn’t know quite what that meant, but he followed it, walking slowly at first, but as he got more confident that he wasn’t going to lose Stiles’ scent trail, he started picking up speed. He was running through the forest soon enough, following Stiles’ trail as easily as if he had left actual breadcrumbs.

He realized where he was headed even before he got there. His blue eyes glowed in the darkness as he set foot in the clearing where what was left of the Nemeton was located, and he couldn’t help but gasp when he saw Stiles’ body, barefoot and dressed in what looked to be his pajamas, sprawled face down on top of the massive tree stump. He could hear that Stiles’ heart was still beating quite strongly so he knew that the boy was at least still alive.

“Stiles!” he called out the name, running towards the Nemeton and jumping on it.

There was no response from the boy. Stiles’ head was pillowed on his arms, his eyes closed, his breathing was even, although his skin was ice cold when Derek touched him, causing a shiver to go down his spine.

“Stiles,” his voice was gentle as he touched Stiles’ shoulder and tried to wake him. “Stiles.”

The boy sighed and his lips quirked up a little as he leaned into Derek’s touch, his movements more feline than human. Derek frowned, because Stiles was not unconscious. He was _asleep_. Deeply asleep. He was sleeping so soundly that Derek couldn’t seem to wake him.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed the sheriff’s cell.

“Stilinski,” the sheriff’s answer was curt and worried.

“I’ve got him,” Derek was straight to the point.

“Oh, thank god!” Stilinski exclaimed. “Where is he? Put him on!”

“He seems to be fine. I think he’s sleeping but I can’t wake him. He seems to be in a really deep sleep.”

“What?”

“Yeah, he’s on the Nemeton.” This part was definitely a troubling development.

“Shit!” Stilinski swore.

“Should I bring him back to the Jeep or take him somewhere else?” Derek asked.

“Take him to the hospital,” Stilinski told him. “If he wakes up and makes a fuss on the way, just tell him I asked you to.”

“OK,” Derek nodded, ready to hang up.

“And Derek?” Stilinski’s voice stopped him from pressing the button.

“Yes, sir?”

“Thank you,” the gratitude in the sheriff’s voice made Derek uncomfortable again. “I’ll tell Scott you found him. Thank you so much.”

“Sure,” Derek didn’t know how to respond, so he nodded and hung up as quickly as he could. He turned back to Stiles, watching how relaxed the boy seemed to be, lying on the stump of what must have once been a humongous tree. He wrapped the blanket around Stiles’ body and pulled him up into a bridal carry, Stiles snuggling into him and resting his head on Derek’s chest, all without waking up.

As Derek was turning to hop off the stump, he saw that a shoot seemed to be reaching out of the stump of the Nemeton. It was small but appeared to be green, healthy, alive, and actually _growing_. Derek didn’t know what that meant. He’d been under the impression that the tree was dead. Was this just some other plant growing out of the stump of this once-powerful tree? Or was the tree recovering? Or was it something else entirely, something suspicious and dangerous. Derek told himself that he would need to return to the Nemeton during daylight and take some pictures to see what the hell was going on with the thing. Times like these, he really wished that his mother was alive so he could ask her for advice. Sighing to himself, he looked around to see what else might catch his eye, but he couldn’t see anything else. Besides, he couldn’t just take his time here. He needed to get Stiles back to civilization.

With Stiles’ blanketed body carefully cradled in his arms, Derek walked quickly in the direction of town, heading straight to the hospital. It was useful having grown up in the Preserve, the way he had, as he had no trouble orienting himself and taking Stiles where he needed to go. Stiles slept the entire way there, not even waking when Derek stumbled over some tree roots that he couldn’t see, given the way he was carrying Stiles. All Stiles did was grumble, making noises that even with Derek’s werewolf hearing he couldn’t make out any words, but he expressed his displeasure at being jostled, and one hand came out of the blankets and clutched at Derek’s shirt. He stirred for a moment, settling himself more comfortably into Derek’s body, and then seemed to continue sleeping on, back into that deep sleep that he seemed to finally be enjoying, although his fingers kept a hold of the front of Derek’s shirt fairly tightly. That little move made Derek’s heart jump in his chest and he found himself unable to resist nuzzling into Stile’s hair.

He couldn’t enjoy having Stiles in his arms that much though, not just because the poor thing was sound asleep and had somehow found his way out to the Nemeton, presumably while he was sleepwalking. But also because, now that Stiles was right up against him, and Derek could smell what he was exuding, he wasn’t sure that he liked what he could smell. Stiles’ scent, although calm and peaceful, was still off. He did not smell healthy. Derek was sure he could smell illness on the boy.

What the fuck had the nogitsune done to his body after it split them in two? Derek didn’t know, but he was sure it must have something to do with that. The nogitsune was gone, Stiles was himself again, but something was terribly wrong, and Derek didn’t know what it was.

He picked up his pace, although he took care not to jostle Stiles too much, keeping him close to his chest. He could feel that Stiles was beginning to warm up, all bundled in the blanket and probably leeching the werewolf’s body heat to help him along. Derek was both relieved and disappointed when he got to the hospital.

The sheriff must have called to let them know what was happening because Melissa McCall was standing at the emergency entrance with a gurney, looking around expectantly. Derek carried Stiles over to her and carefully put him down on the gurney, and Stiles’ whimper of protest when Melissa untangled Stiles’ fingers from Derek’s shirt again stabbed Derek through his heart.

He was just unhappy to lose his werewolf space heater, Derek told himself, although he wished that Stiles was protesting losing contact with Derek because he wanted to be close to the ‘wolf. So, Derek stood there, watching as Melissa wheeled Stiles away, taking his vital signs and calling it out to the hospital staff that had magically appeared to help her.

Derek stood there for a few minutes, just staring at the closed doors through which Melissa had taken Stiles, and he was about to turn away and go back to his car, or at any rate, leave the hospital, when a hand on his arm stopped him.

“How is he?” it was the sheriff.

“I don’t know,” Derek shook his head. “He seemed to be sleeping really soundly…”

“But?” Stilinski caught the hesitance there.

“But…” Derek didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know. They should run some tests on him.”

“You don’t think it’s just sleep deprivation and PTSD?”

“It’s probably that, too,” Derek had to give the man an honest answer.

“But… you think there’s something else?”

“He doesn’t smell right,” Derek ran his fingers through his hair.

“Is it the nogitsune?” Stilinski whispered harshly.

“I don’t think so,” Derek bit his lip. “Something else. Something the nogitsune might have done to him before evacuating his body? He smells… sick. I don’t know what he has, but it’s something, and it’s serious.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” the epithet was heartfelt and Derek agreed with the sentiment, wholeheartedly. “OK. I’m going to go find Melissa and let her know what you told me.”

Derek nodded and watched as Stilinski disappeared beyond the double doors, his badge and gun, and his authority as the minor child’s father allowing him to go where Derek couldn’t. He was about to leave again when Scott came running in.

“Is he OK?” the young alpha asked, his concern genuine.

Derek nodded. He didn’t know what else to say. As far as he knew, for now, Stiles was OK.

“The sheriff said you found him on the Nemeton?” Scott asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“And he was asleep?”

“Yeah.”

“You couldn’t wake him up?”

“Nope.”

“What the hell is going on with him?” Scott ranted. “He won’t talk to me, Derek. This is Stiles. He tells me everything!”

Derek had no response to that.

“I got to the Jeep maybe ten minutes after you did, but I couldn’t track Stiles,” Scott confessed. “I could smell you, and I was going to follow you into the Preserve, but the sheriff thought I should drive around on my bike and see if I could pick up his trail down the road, in case he doubled back or something.”

Derek was surprised that Scott couldn’t follow Stiles’ scent trail because it had been so obvious to Derek, but he wondered if maybe the wind had picked up and made it difficult for Scott or something.

“Come on,” Scott took Derek’s arm and dragged him to a waiting room. “Let’s give it a few minutes then we’ll go find my mom and see what she can tell us.”

Derek didn’t have the energy to break away from Scott so he followed along and obediently sat next to the alpha. Lydia, Malia and Kira arrived at the waiting room ten minutes later, and they were still waiting, but the sheriff came back out right before Scott was about to crash the party.

“He’s sleeping,” Stilinski told the pack. “They can’t seem to wake him up, but it’s not a coma, he’s not unconscious. He doesn’t seem to have a scratch on him, but he was out there in the cold in his pajamas for a while, and there are early signs of hypothermia, so they’re warming him up and they’re going to try to let him sleep until he wakes up. Naturally.”

“And if he doesn’t wake up naturally?” Scott asked.

“We’ll cross that bridge only if we need to, Scott,” Melissa’s voice made them all turn. “It’s a school night. You kids go on home.”

“Thank you for helping us look for him,” Stilinski added.

Scott, Lydia, Malia and Kira turned to leave the hospital. Derek waited until they were out of earshot.

“Are you going back to work?” he asked the sheriff.

“I have to,” he sighed, scrubbing his face with his hand. “There’s just too few of us left.”

“I can stay,” Derek volunteered. “I’ll stay with Stiles.”

Melissa waited for Stilinski to nod before she led Derek through the double doors, and even though Derek would have been able to find him by scent alone, he appreciated the quiet comfort that Melissa seemed to radiate. They would cross whatever bridge they needed to, if they needed to. Derek was OK with that.


	4. Chapter Four: Stiles

**Chapter Four: Stiles**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

Stiles yawned and turned onto his side, snuggling into the pillow. Someone had piled the pillows up on his bed, though, propping him up, which he really didn’t like as it usually gave him a terrible crick in the neck, plus he couldn’t find _his_ pillow and he really couldn’t sleep without it. Without opening his eyes, he began feeling around, trying to locate his pillow. His pillow was so familiar to him that he would know it by touch.

After a moment of feeling around and not finding it, he forced his heavy eyelids open, and he almost jumped off the bed when he realized that he was not in his own bed. In fact, it looked like he was on a hospital bed. As in, he was in a fucking hospital. His pulse jumped and for a moment he thought that he was back at Eichen House, and he had been restrained or sedated. And if he was still in Eichen House, then he was still the nogitsune and he was supposed to stay awake so as to not allow it to roam free. But he had been asleep. What in the hell had he done while he was asleep? The nogitsune was going to wreak havoc on Eichen House while he slept. He knew it.

He would deny that he screamed when a hand landed on his shoulder, but he would admit to letting out perhaps a rather loud and unmanly squeak.

“Stiles?” the voice was very familiar.

Stiles turned onto his back and saw that it was Derek, and his hand was warm on Stiles’ shoulder. Which was some weird signal that reminded Stiles’ body that he was cold. He began shivering.

“Are you cold?” Derek asked.

Stiles nodded, his teeth suddenly clacking together. He was _freezing_. He had been having trouble staying warm ever since the ice bath, really, but he had seemed to be fine, warm enough at least, until he woke up. Why the hell was he so cold all of a sudden, and why was he in the hospital? But even though he was in a hospital, he was still infinitely relieved that it didn’t look to be Eichen House. It was just the regular hospital. Eichen House wouldn’t have let Derek in to see him, for one. Which meant that he wasn’t the nogitsune anymore, and he remembered being vomited out of his own body and coming back to himself. He was Stiles again, and he was in the hospital, and Derek was there with him. Although… why _was_ Derek sitting in his room watching him sleep? Typical. He was such a creeperwolf.

“Hold on,” Derek shrugged his jacket off and draped it over Stiles before he stepped out of the room. Stiles snuggled into the leather, trying to absorb the leftover warmth from Derek’s body heat. The jacket smelled of Axe body wash and a cologne or aftershave that Stiles couldn’t put a name to but was typical of Derek. He had had the same smell ever since Stiles had known him and the scent of Derek’s cologne and the warmth of his body heat on the jacket comforted Stiles. He found his eyes starting to get heavy again, even though he knew he was in the hospital and he didn’t have his damned pillow.

Stiles drifted off but the sound of the door shutting softly woke him up and he sat up with a jolt.

“Stiles, you’re awake,” it was Ms. McCall, coming in with Derek, who seemed to be carrying a pile of extra blankets. 

She checked his vital signs, looking at all the machines Stiles seemed to be attached to, and Derek began draping the blankets, one after another over Stiles, piling them on until Stiles was warm and as cozy as he could imagine. Ms. McCall tried to take Derek’s jacket away while Derek was tucking the blankets in neatly, but Stiles’ whine made Derek shake his head.

“Let him keep it,” Derek told Ms. McCall. “He needs it more than I do, right now.”

Stiles gave him a grateful look and snuggled into the blankets and Derek’s jacket with a sigh. “I don’t suppose my dad is here?” he asked.

Noah was a busy man, trying to cope with crime in Beacon Hills when the Sheriff’s Department had been so depleted, first by the kanima, and then by the oni and the nogitsune. Noah’s department was shorthanded and he had to work even more than usual to make up for it. And a lot of the losses, or maybe even all of it was Stiles’ fault.

“Yeah, he had to get back to work,” Ms. McCall’s tone was gentle. “How are you feeling?”

“Not so cold anymore,” Stiles gave Derek a small smile. “And kind of tired. What happened? How’d I end up here?”

“Do you remember anything?” Derek asked.

Stiles wracked his brain but all he could remember was watching a documentary on cats with Derek before he fell asleep. “I think we were watching that episode on rare wild felines last night?” he tried to think what else he might remember. “I fell asleep?”

“Yeah,” Derek nodded. “We did watch that documentary and you did fall asleep.”

“Nothing after that?” Ms. McCall prompted him gently.

Stiles tried to think back again. “Nope,” he shook his head, and a yawn escaped him. “Nothing. I didn’t get possessed again, did I?”

“No,” Ms. McCall had such a calm demeanor that surely even Derek felt soothed by her presence. “But we think you were sleepwalking again.”

“Sleepwalking?” Stiles repeated.

“Sleep-driving your Jeep,” Melissa continued.

“Shit! Did I get in a wreck?” Stiles’ heartrate began racing and the heart monitor beeped quickly, matching it. “Is the Jeep OK?” That Jeep had been his mother’s and Stiles couldn’t imagine anything happening to it. “Did I hurt someone?”

“No, no,” Ms. McCall put her hand on Stiles’ arm. “Your Jeep is fine. No one was hurt.”

“Then what the hell happened, and why am I in the hospital?” Stiles was starting to panic now.

“Breathe, Stiles,” Derek reached under the blankets and took his hand in his, and rubbed gentle circles on the back of it, and Stiles felt himself breathing better and calming down somewhat. “You don’t remember anything? Strange dreams, anything like that?”

“No,” Stiles shook his head. “I’m going to say that it was the best sleep I’ve had in weeks.”

He saw Derek and Ms. McCall exchange significant glances.

“What?” Stiles asked.

“Your dad found the Jeep on the side of the road headed out of town,” Derek spoke, although he continued the soothing motions on Stiles’ hand as he did so. “I followed your scent from the Jeep, into the Preserve. I found you on the Nemeton.”

“What?” Stiles could feel his eyes trying to bug right out of his head. “The Nemeton? I don’t even think I can find my way there during the day when the sun is shining. How could I sleepwalk there in the middle of the night?”

Derek shook his head. “No idea, Stiles.”

“Is it… is it the nogitsune again?” Stiles couldn’t hide the quaver in his voice. He didn’t know if he had the strength to go up against the nogitsune again. He was already so tired and so broken from what it had done the first time around. There was no way he would survive a second bout against it. Fuck, there was no way he would want to survive another round with it.

“We don’t think so,” Ms. McCall told him. Her dark eyes were gentle and comforting. She wasn’t lying to him, he could tell.

“I don’t know how many times I’m going to have to submit to the oni,” Stiles sighed, clutching at Derek’s hand, unable to resist doing that. It felt good, because Derek’s hand was warm and it felt to him as if Derek was anchoring him to himself, and anchoring him to the present.

“You’re in no shape to be tested by the oni again,” Ms. McCall told him, smiling. “Besides, Noshiko came by while you were sleeping and she’s sure there is no trace of the nogitsune left inside you.”

“So what, then? Why am I sleepwalking to the Nemeton?”

“Derek found you sleeping on the Nemeton, in fact,” Ms. McCall made a face.

“Sleeping? _On_ the thing?” Stiles could hear the disbelief in his own voice. “What? Like leaning against it or something?”

“Try you were lying on it like it was a bed,” Derek grinned. “You made it look kind of comfortable.”

“On the tree stump?” Stiles’ mouth fell open.

“It’s big enough to be a bed,” Derek shrugged.

“And you do have a talent for falling asleep in the most ridiculous places,” Ms. McCall smiled at him.

Stiles made a face. He had to concede that point. “OK, well, since we’ve figured out that I was sleepwalking and that I just needed some sleep, can I go home now?”

Ms. McCall’s expression turned serious. “Your dad wants us to run some tests while you’re here,” she told him, trying to break it to him gently.

“What? Why?” Stiles knew that his voice was rising, but his dad knew how he felt about the hospital. Stiles wanted out of here. The nogitsune had worn his face when it came here and terrorized the place, gleefully killing people. Stiles had done so much damage here, he couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face all the people that he had hurt. Why the hell had they brought him to the hospital when he could have just been taken home? He slept better at home in his own bed than in the hospital.

“Stiles,” Derek’s voice broke through his panicked haze. “Breathe with me.”

Stiles was getting lightheaded and his pulse was just racing, he couldn’t catch his breath. Derek had taken Stiles’ hand and put it on his own chest, and Stiles could barely hear the commands to breathe with him, but he could feel Derek’s chest moving with each breath, in and out, slowly, and he tried to imitate the movements. Gradually, things came back into focus and Stiles took a deep, shuddering breath.

“That’s it,” Derek’s voice was soft and encouraging and Stiles could still feel his hand on Derek’s chest, fingers now grabbing hold of Derek’s t-shirt. “That’s it. Keep breathing. You’re doing great.”

“I want to go home,” he whimpered. He barely stopped himself from calling for his mom. She had been gone for years now and calling for her would do no one any good.

“I know,” Ms. McCall’s voice was soothing. “I know, Stiles.”

“Can I go home?” Stiles knew that he was begging but he didn’t really care. He didn’t care either that tears were leaking out of his eyes. “Please?”

“After the tests, OK?” Ms. McCall was sympathetic, but she was not going to budge on this. “Your dad is really worried about you, Stiles. He wants us to make sure that you’re OK.”

Stiles’ lips were wobbling but he took another deep breath and steeled himself. It sounded like he would not have a say in this. He was used to not having a say in most things, like his mom dying, or having to go to school, or doing lacrosse, because it made Scott happy to do lacrosse and they were supposed to enjoy doing things together, or working to figure out who the kanima was to try and stop it from killing too many people. Or doing things that he really did not want to do because the nogitsune possessing his body was making him do it. This was just one more thing that he needed to absorb.

After he had calmed down somewhat, he mostly ignored what Ms. McCall was saying as she continued to check him over. He was even more drained now. Panic attacks did that to you. He drew his hand back under the blankets and snuggled even deeper into Derek’s jacket, letting the scent of the leather and of Derek soothe him. He knew that at this point, it was his own body heat that was heating up the material, but still, he imagined that it was Derek’s body heat and that seemed to do the trick. His eyes were heavy again.

“You’re worn out, Stiles,” Ms. McCall told him, running her fingers through his hair. He had let his hair grow out from the buzzcut that he used to have for years, and he wasn’t sure yet whether he liked it or not, but Ms. McCall’s fingers in his hair reminded him of his mother, so that was kind of nice. “But your dad is on his way over. Can you try to stay awake for a few more minutes?”

Stiles frowned when Ms. McCall removed her fingers. He liked having his hair played with when he was upset. It was what his mother used to do. Another set of fingers began carding through his hair and he sighed, relaxing again. It took him a moment to realize that it was Derek. He had picked up on Stiles’ need and he was running his fingers through Stiles’ hair, rubbing his head and scritching his fingernails down his scalp in that way that made Stiles just want to purr and drool. Stiles’ head was so muddled from what the hell was going on that he didn’t really want to object to what Derek was doing, even though he had to wonder why the man was doing it.

He really wanted to talk to his dad and convince him to spring him out of the hospital, but Derek’s fingers were soothing, and Stiles was suddenly even more exhausted than before. That was how it used to be after panic attacks, back when he used to get them all the time. They always took a lot out of him and he would need a short nap to recover from them. He ignored the soft murmur of voices, Derek’s and Ms. McCall’s, assuming that if they needed an answer from him that they would poke him awake. He let his eyes close and sighed, allowing sleep to take him again, unconsciously angling his head into Derek’s hand, not wanting the comforting movements to stop.

He woke up again when the fingers were removed from his hair. Frowning, he reached out to clutch at Derek’s hand, and opened his eyes to see Derek look guiltily at the doorway. He turned his head and saw that it was his dad.

Stiles gave his father a tired smile, even as he pulled Derek’s hand back to his head and rubbed his head on it. Derek sighed and continued doing the thing with his fingers that was relaxing Stiles.

“Stiles,” his father strode over to the bed and carefully leaned down to embrace him. “Shit, son. Are you OK?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” Stiles said around a yawn. “Just tired.”

“Yeah well, midnight walks through the forest will do that to ya, kid,” Stilinski joked, and not for the first time, Stiles could see where his own habit of cracking jokes, even awkward ones, when he didn’t know what else to say came from. Although most people who had known his mother would say that he took after her – with his pale skin, the infernal number of moles, his upturned nose, his slender boniness, the ADHD, and hell, his weird quirkiness that tended to throw most people off – but his sense of humor, a lot of it was pure Noah Stilinski.

“I don’t even remember doing it,” Stiles pouted. He made a noise of protest when Derek made a move to pull his hand away again, and the ‘wolf rolled his eyes, gave his dad an apologetic look, and continued to pet him.

Stiles had to quell the urge to giggle uncontrollably at the thought that he was making Derek pet him in front of his dad, but hell, it had been a weird few weeks and after all that the nogitsune had done, Stiles couldn’t find it in him to worry that he was getting addicted to Derek’s presence in his life. Derek had sought him out to check if he was doing OK, and he hadn’t taken Stiles’ denials for an answer and instead had just stayed with him. They didn’t talk much, but Derek just tended to feed him, give him time to do his homework, and then they watched something on Stiles’ laptop until the boy fell asleep and then, presumably Derek left to go back to his own home. He was giving up his evenings to keep Stiles company when Stiles was feeling so vulnerable, and he couldn’t stop himself from taking the comfort that Derek was silently offering, even if it made him look weird in front of his dad. Fuck, if there was something his dad was used to, it was Stiles doing weird things in front of him. So there was that, at least.

“You don’t remember it at all?” Noah asked.

Stiles shook his head.

His dad grunted and sighed. “Do you remember driving your mother’s car?”

Stiles shook his head. “Last thing I remember was watching a documentary with Derek and then I think I must’ve fallen asleep.”

Derek made a noise of agreement that that was what had happened.

“OK, Stiles,” his dad gripped his shoulder, having trouble finding his body under the tons of blankets that Derek had heaped onto his body. “You feeling cold, kiddo?”

“I was,” Stiles grinned, “until Derek brought all these blankets.”

“Derek tells me that you’ve been cold for a while though, not just because you were hypothermic after spending half the night in your pajamas on the Nemeton.”

Stiles gave Derek an accusing glare. He’d wanted to spare his father the gory details of what he was feeling, but Derek just shrugged and continued petting him. It wasn’t like Stiles had ever been able to sway the former alpha from doing anything Stiles didn’t want him to do so he stopped that train of thought. For now. Maybe when Derek was done petting him, he might have the energy to yell at him.

“It’s nothing,” he told his dad. “I can handle it.”

“Son,” Noah was about to launch into his concerned dad diatribe, and Stiles really didn’t have the energy to deal with all that love, and concern. His dad shouldn’t be kind to him. His dad needed to punish him. Needed to see him for the terrible person that he was.

“It’s fine, Dad,” Stiles interrupted forcefully. “I don’t want to talk about it. And I want to go home. We don’t need to do these tests, Dad. It’s just going to be a waste of money. Haven’t you already spent enough time and money on me when the stupid n-n-n…” Stiles couldn’t say the word, “…when the stupid demon possessed me? I know about the bills from Eichen House, Dad. We don’t need this on top of that. I don’t even want to know how much it cost us for me to just lay here and sleep the night away. Just let me go home. I’ll be fine.”

Noah sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “Stiles, you’re all I have left in this world.”

Stiles blew out a long breath.

“You’re doing the tests,” Stilinski gritted out.

“Why? Why, Dad?” Stiles tried begging. “I don’t want them. I don’t want to be here.”

“Because I’m your father, and I said so,” Noah gave him that look that meant that Stiles was not going to win this argument, no matter what.

Stiles stopped arguing, although he glared at his father. He knew he was pouting but he didn’t really care.

“Are you really OK, kiddo?” the concern in Dad’s voice was almost too much for Stiles.

“I’m _fine_ , Dad!” he insisted.

“You’re _fine_ , you’re absolutely _fine_ , there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. And that is why you’re under what looks to be at least a dozen blankets, and you were sleepwalking and sleep driving, and only Derek here was able to track you down to the Nemeton, of all places?” Dad was yelling now.

Well, at least he didn’t know that Stiles’ entire body had been aching for weeks, too, so that was something. That irrational thought popped into Stiles’ head.

“At least I was actually sleeping for once,” Stiles grumbled.

His dad snorted with surprised laughter at that, and Stiles could see Derek rolling his eyes.

“Please, Stiles,” his dad gave him that look that Stiles was powerless to resist. The one that said, I’ve lost your mother and I can’t lose you, too, so please, humor me and do this thing for me.

“Fine,” Stiles sighed. “It’s not like they’re going to do what _I_ ask them to do. I get it. I’m the kid. You’re the parent. You have all the say in the world.”

“Stiles,” the rebuke was gentle, but Stiles refused to take his words back. It was true. No one was taking into account what Stiles wanted. What he wanted had absolutely no bearing in what was about to happen to him today. “Please. For me.”

Stiles nodded curtly, biting his lip to stop his eyes from tearing up, and refusing to meet his father’s eyes. He didn’t have to like it and he wasn’t going to pretend that he was happy about this. He had his hands full pretending that he wasn’t deathly cold or in pain at all times. He didn’t need to add another thing to pretend about.

“Thanks,” his dad leaned in and kissed his forehead in the way that his mom used to, and Stiles blinked, letting the tears pooling in his eyes run down his cheeks. “I’m glad you’re awake and that you’re OK, kiddo.”

“Yeah,” he bit out. But no matter how angry he was at his dad, he still hugged him back when the man gathered him carefully into his arms and hugged him tightly.

“I have to get back to work,” Noah’s tone was full of regret. “Scott will come by after school.”

Stiles nodded. He had expected that. His dad was busy and had an important job, and he was almost a grown up and didn’t need his dad to be around for everything.

“Will you be OK…?” Noah asked, not wanting to say it out loud. Would Stiles be OK if he left Stiles alone to face all these tests that he wanted his son to take.

“Sure,” Stiles gave him a small, unconvincing smile. “Ms. McCall will keep me company, I’m sure, so I won’t be alone during the scary parts.” Just alone for the rest of it. It was all scary to Stiles, but apparently, that didn’t matter to his dad.

“Derek, would you mind…?” Noah turned his gaze on the werewolf who was silently sitting by Stiles’ side, brushing his fingers through Stiles’ hair.

“I’ll stay with him,” Derek told his dad.

“You don’t have to,” Stiles started to object, suddenly feeling like he was everyone’s responsibility. He hated putting people out like this.

“I know,” Derek told him, lips quirking up in a small smile.

Stiles’ dad stared at the two of them for a moment before he nodded. “Can I talk to you outside for a moment, Derek?”

“Aw, Daaaad,” Stiles sighed.

“I just want to have a word with Derek in private,” Noah told his son, grinning when Stiles whined pitifully as Derek stepped away from him. “Derek will be right back. You stay here, and get better, OK?”

Get better from what? Lack of sleep? Stiles blew a frustrated breath out of his nose and settled into the bed, wishing that he was home and not in the hospital, and secretly, childishly glad that Derek had elected to stay with him. He knew that he wasn’t going to be able to squirm his way out of these stupid tests, but he also knew that if he had to face them all alone, there was no way he was going to make it. He was going to implode into himself, and then what would his dad do? He leaned into his father’s long hug, feeling his dad sigh long and hard and kiss his temple. And he watched longingly as his dad left the room, even though he stood at the doorway and just stared at Stiles for a good long moment.

And then Stiles was all alone in the room, the machines beeping and doing their things around him. He sighed, cursed his very existence for the umpteenth time, cursed the fact that he had talked Scott into going to look for a dead body in the woods in the middle of the night, and cursed Peter Hale for being insane and biting Scott, turning him into a werewolf and dragging Stiles into this whole, ridiculous, supernatural world where his pale, skinny ass had no business being.


	5. Chapter Five: Derek

**Chapter Five: Derek**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

Derek stepped out of Stiles’ room and the sheriff shut the door behind him, careful not to let it slam shut. Derek crossed his arms and faced the sheriff. He didn’t know what the man was going to say, but with his track record, Derek expected that this was going to be some kind of dressing down.

“Look,” the sheriff began. “I don’t know what the hell is going on with my son, but he seems to be opening up to you, and I know he’s just some dumb teenager who’s intruding on your life, and I hate to put this on you, but please, if you could stay with him for as long as you can, today. It would be a huge favor that I could never repay, and it would make me feel a whole lot better about the fact that I have to keep going back to work when my kid needs me.”

Derek’s mouth fell open. Whatever it was he had expected, it certainly wasn’t this. “Yeah, sure,” he finally got out. “He’s a good kid. Mouthy, but…”

Both he and the sheriff made a face at that. No doubt, Stilinski had been the victim of Stiles’ sharp tongue for years.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this, Derek, but I’m grateful,” Stilinski continued. “I want to take time off and just be with him, but it’s busier than ever at the station, and we’re so shorthanded now.”

“I understand,” Derek assured him.

“And even if I did take time off, he’ll just sit there and pretend that he’s fine!” Stilinski ranted. “He’s _not_ fine! Has he looked at himself in the mirror? He’s lost weight. I mean, he lost a bunch of weight during the whole nogitsune ordeal, but he’s lost more weight since then, Derek. Melissa showed me his stats from when you brought him in. He’s not gaining back what he’d lost. He didn’t have much to lose to begin with! I don’t even know…” he petered away. “I just need to know that someone is looking out for him while I have to go out there and take care of the rest of this goddamned town.”

“I’ve got him,” Derek told the sheriff, unsure what to do with what the man had just unloaded on him. Sure, he’d known that Stiles wasn’t doing well, but if he was continuing to lose weight even after they had banished the nogitsune, then he wasn’t sure what he could do about that. It had to have something to do with the sickness that Derek could smell on him. “I’ll stay with him. It’s no bother.” The perks of being independently wealthy and not having a need to work for a living, he told himself wryly.

The sheriff stared at him for a long moment before he nodded. “I don’t know how to thank you for this.”

“Unnecessary,” Derek waved it away. “He’s pack. You’re pack. It’s what pack does for each other.”

The older man sighed and shook his head. “Still,” he breathed softly. “I’m grateful.”

A thought struck Derek. “This Eichen House bill thing,” he said.

“Ah, it’s just the usual bullshit. My insurance won’t cover this and that, and since Stiles voluntarily checked in for seventy-two hours…”

“They’re charging you for that stay?”

“Well, yeah?” Stilinski looked puzzled. “They’re a healthcare institution. Why wouldn’t they?”

“They locked him up and drugged him with medications that went against his therapist’s instructions,” Derek argued. “They ignored the suicides that were happening. They didn’t even try to help him, and in the end it was their mismanagement, bordering on abuse, that caused Stiles to be put in the position where he had to accept the nogitsune or let someone murder Malia Tate in cold blood.” Derek had heard this story from Malia and from Scott after the fact.

The sheriff nodded, “But I can’t really do anything about it.”

“They lost him during this time that he was in their care,” Derek growled. “And they’re _billing_ you for it?”

“I know, but I don’t think I have any recourse, not without bringing up werewolves and nogitsunes and god knows what else.”

Derek frowned at that. “I’ll take care of it,” he mumbled. He would have to ask Peter for the Hale family’s lawyers to figure this one out, but he wasn’t going to let Eichen House do even more damage to the Stilinskis.

“We don’t accept handouts,” Stilinski said stiffly.

“I’m not offering you money,” Derek countered. “I just don’t think you should have to pay them for what they did to Stiles.”

They locked eyes for a moment before Stilinski looked away. “I don’t disagree with that,” he finally said.

“OK, then.”

Stilinski’s eyes went back to Stiles’ door. He needed to leave but he was hesitating again.

“I’ll call if anything comes up,” Derek told him.

“Here,” the sheriff handed him Stiles’ phone. “It’s so he doesn’t drive himself, you, or anyone else in this hospital crazy being all cooped up without a distraction.”

Derek had to smile at that. The man definitely knew his son well.

“And you’ll call? If, you know, anything happens? Anything at all?”

“Yes, sir.”

Stilinski gave him another long look before he clapped Derek’s shoulder, nodded and said his goodbyes. Derek watched him walk away until he disappeared around a corner before he went back into the room. Stiles was sitting up, trying to keep his jacket and all the blankets on him as he struggled to try to maneuver to stand.

“Get back in the bed before Ms. McCall comes in here and yells at the both of us,” Derek rolled his eyes.

“I was worried,” Stiles muttered, climbing awkwardly back into the bed.

Derek helped him settle back in, tucking his jacket and the blankets around Stiles even more securely. “I’m a big scary werewolf, remember?” he teased Stiles. “I think I can handle one human.”

“Hey, my dad may only be as human as I am, but don’t you underestimate him!” Stiles objected. “I’m sure Mr Argent gave him some tips.”

Derek grinned. “He just wanted to make sure I hang around for a while since he can’t,” he admitted. “And he said to give you this.” He waved Stiles’ cell in the air.

“Oh, thank god!” Stiles made grabby hands at it and Derek took great pleasure in keeping it just out of the boy’s reach. “You’re a meanie,” he finally subsided, crossing his arms and pouting.

Derek couldn’t help but give him a fond smile as he handed the boy his phone. “Here,” he told him. “Don’t pout. It’s unbecoming.”

Lie, Derek told himself. Stiles’ cupid bow lips were adorable, and when he pouted, it reminded Derek that the boy was still vibrant, still full of life, no matter how off he might smell. He liked being able to provoke him and get a rise out of him.

“Meaniewolf,” Stiles quipped, although he was busy going through his messages and his tone was absent, more than anything else. “Geez, you guys were calling me a lot last night.”

“Well, that’s what happens when you disappear into thin air in the middle of the night, Stiles,” Derek shrugged, pulling the chair closer and settling in.

“How did my dad know I was gone, anyway?”

“The motion detectors are still on in your house.”

Stiles’ eyes widened. “Has my dad been watching me?” he whispered. “Shit! Did he see anything… incriminating? Oh my god!”

“He’s just making sure that if you were to sleepwalk, that he’d know if you left the house,” Derek leaned back. He pulled a paperback out of the back pocket of his jeans and began riffling through it to find his page.

Stiles contemplated that for a minute before he nodded. “OK, I guess,” he sighed. “Although I probably should object to the invasion of privacy.”

“You might want to wait until we fix the whole sleepwalking thing,” Derek grinned at him. Stiles went back to his phone and Derek started reading.

“You need to get a Kindle, dude,” Stiles told him, glancing up once, before turning his gaze back to his phone and tapping away at it.

“They smell funky,” Derek responded absently. “And don’t call me dude.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Stiles’ grin was mischievous. “Wait, how can an electronic reader smell weirder than paper books? Have you smelled some of those old books, dude? There are some really pungent smelling books out there.”

“They just smell like old books and I like the smell of old books,” Derek shrugged. “Shut up and play with your phone, Stiles.”

Stiles stuck his tongue out at Derek but he did go back to whatever the hell it was he was doing on the phone, leaving Derek to read his book in relative peace.

They brought him a small, unappetizing looking meal which smelled weirdly not like real food and made Derek wrinkle his nose. Stiles picked at it before the tests began. He was poked, prodded, and he had to provide all kinds of samples from sputum to urine to blood. It made Derek really glad that he had been born a werewolf and didn’t need to go through this kind of pain just to figure out what was going on with his body. The whole healing thing, and the not getting sick thing was an absolute blessing.

Stiles cringed at every needle, and Derek felt the need to let the guy clutch at his hand when he was scared. But it really killed him when Stiles had to have an MRI and the poor kid was left alone in his hospital gown and had to lie as still as he could in a metal tube for over forty-five minutes. The clanging of the machine was loud enough that even in the observation room, it was annoying enough to cause Derek’s head to throb along with it. He had no idea how Stiles was coping inside the machine, surrounded by the noise, and constantly being told to stay still.

Afterwards, Stiles sat on the wheelchair they’d brought him, huddled into himself, making himself look as small as possible and Derek came into the room and draped his jacket around the boy’s bony shoulders, keeping his touch gentle and constant so he didn’t startle him. Stiles’ liquid brown eyes were wide and scared and Derek wished that he could just stop it all, but he wasn’t Stiles’ parent and he knew that there really was something wrong with Stiles. He didn’t like the methods by which humans went around diagnosing shit, but he also knew that he couldn’t just go around telling doctors that Stiles ‘smelled off’ and not be able to know what it was he was smelling. This was a necessary evil. But he vowed that when they finally let him leave the hospital, he would do something nice for Stiles to make up for it.

When the tests were finally over, Stiles called his father and begged him to let him go home, and Derek had no idea how anyone would be able to deny him anything. He was happy that the sheriff swung by to see how things were, spoke to his doctors, and sprung him from the place before he left to go back to work. Derek brought the car around while Stiles was arguing about the need to be wheeled out of the building in a wheelchair but Ms. McCall had been firm. It was hospital protocol. So, Derek stood, leaning against his car, watching as Ms. McCall wheeled Stiles out and the boy was complaining about the indignity the entire time. Derek gave Melissa a sympathetic grin as he opened the door to the passenger side of his car.

“You want me to carry you into the car, Stiles?” he teased.

“Don’t you even,” Stiles stood, although he immediately wobbled, and Derek caught his arm, steadying him and helping him into the car, and he and Melissa exchanged concerned glances now.

“Don’t strain yourself, Stiles,” Melissa was giving him instructions. “I’ve called in the prescriptions so Derek, if you could swing by the pharmacy to pick them up.”

“No problem,” Derek told her. He went around the car and got in the driver’s seat, waiting until Melissa was done lecturing Stiles on all the dos and don’ts that he was now subject to, and Stiles just sat and endured it until the nurse took a breath.

“OK, thanks Ms. McCall!” Stiles waved cheerily.

“Scott has detention this afternoon but he’ll come by the house after he’s done,” Melissa told him.

“OK.”

“But seriously, don’t stress yourself out. The doctor gave you a few days off school, take them.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “I’m fine.”

“Stiles,” Melissa squatted down and took Stiles’ hand. “You really scared us all last night.”

He shrugged his shoulder. “I’m sorry?” he offered.

“Don’t be sorry,” the nurse told him. “We need to take this seriously, Stiles. We need to figure this out so we can get you better.”

He sighed. “OK. Whatever.”

She ruffled his hair and gave him a grin. “Be nice to Derek,” she admonished him. “He’s doing his good deed for the year, taking you on.”

Stiles gave Derek a quick look and a soft smile. “You big ol’ softie,” he teased. “I should’ve called you Softiewolf ‘stead of Sourwolf.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “I _will_ rip your throat out…”

“With your teeth!” Stiles finished, laughing brightly. “OK Ms. McCall. We’re off.”

After the nurse gave them a final set of instructions, they were finally allowed to leave. Derek stopped by the pharmacy as instructed, picking up the meds. He gave Stiles the choice of getting either Chinese or pizza delivered to his home. He could see that the boy was in no shape to go out for a meal, but hospital food really was terrible and after what he had been put through, Stiles deserved a treat. Besides, the sheriff had said that he was still losing weight. Derek had been trying to feed the boy in the last week or so, but obviously he had to step up his game if he was going to make a difference.

So, when Stiles waffled, unable to decide, Derek decided to call and order both. It surprised Derek when the doorbell rang and Peter turned up, all solicitous and smarmy, trading barbs with Stiles, but his concern for the boy was genuine and their snipes didn’t stray into the territory of cruel, so Derek decided to let it go and keep the peace. Stiles didn’t tell Peter to leave, so Derek wouldn’t either. And when Scott, Malia, Kira and Lydia turned up, Derek was glad that he had ordered a ton of food because feeding werewolves, werecoyotes, kitsunes and banshees was a tall order.

It also helped that they cheered Stiles up. He lit up when his friends arrived, his whiskey eyes bright and happy, his snark back up to normal levels, and even though he had on several layers of clothes, including a bright red Beacon Hills Lacrosse Team hoodie and Derek’s leather jacket over that, Derek knew that he had on a sassy graphic t-shirt underneath all the layers. He was his usual sassy self.

His friends were careful not to make any disparaging remarks when Stiles’ fingers shook and he jammed his hands into his pockets, or if he started shivering for apparently no reason. Malia, he could tell, was watching Stiles carefully, her eyes narrowed, but whenever she opened her mouth, Lydia would elbow her and shake her head.

It was nice to see the pack interact this way, Derek thought. As if they were a pack. It was obvious that they cared for each other, and that they would all do their best not to upset Stiles, and to play nice with people they didn’t necessarily like, like Peter. The pack was coming together to care for an injured pack member, and this was how pack was supposed to behave. Derek couldn’t help but approve of this behavior.

Peter, though, was watching Malia like she was werewolf catnip, and Derek wasn’t quite sure he understood the emotions coming from his uncle while his eyes were trained on the werecoyote. He would have to ask Peter about it another time, not that the man would ever give him a straight answer. He decided not to worry too much about the internal politics within the pack and instead, he watched Stiles. He was trying not to be too obvious, but he was making a note of how many slices of pizza and how much Chinese food Stiles ended up eating. It wasn’t the normal level that a teenaged boy should consume, but it was better than the almost-nothing that Stiles had ended up eating at the hospital, not that Derek blamed him for that. That tray they had brought him there had smelled quite vile.

They were loud and rowdy and there was laughter, camaraderie and gentle ribbing, but when Stiles, exhausted by his trying day of medical procedures, fell asleep despite the bustle of the room, head on Derek’s shoulder, the group quieted down. It was obvious that everyone was worried about the human. With his eyes closed, Stiles looked even more obviously run down than he had when he was awake and his eyes were sparkling and his smile wide. The dark circles were like bruises around his eyes and his cheeks were gaunt. All the layers of clothing that he wore only emphasized just how skinny he had become.

“How sick is he?” Scott asked, keeping his voice low, not wanting to wake his sleeping friend.

“They don’t know yet,” Derek answered just as softly.

Scott nodded. “But they think he is sick?”

“Something’s not right,” Derek murmured, putting an arm around Stiles to anchor him more securely when his head started slipping down Derek’s chest. He didn’t want the boy to faceplant onto the floor. Not that it was probably the first time that would have happened to him, but at least this one time Derek could spare him that indignity. “I can smell it.”

Malia nodded her agreement. “He didn’t smell this sick when we were in Eichen House.”

“And we’re sure it’s not the nogitsune?” Lydia asked.

“My mom says it’s not the nogitsune,” Kira confirmed. “Stiles has already made the oni check him out twice.”

“So, what the hell is wrong with him?” Scott wanted to know.

They all looked at each other helplessly. “Well, I don’t know, but I’m going to go lay him down on his bed, maybe he’ll get a few hours sleep,” Derek carefully shifted Stiles’ body until he was sprawled across his body and he stood, cradling the boy in his arms. “Be right back.”

He ignored the whispers behind his back as he carried Stiles up the stairs and laid him on his bed. He tugged the Converses off the boy’s feet before pulling the covers up securely around him. The pack was still sitting in the living room when he came back down, although someone had put away all the food.

“How did he end up at the Nemeton?” Lydia was asking.

“He walked there,” Scott shrugged.

“While he was asleep?” Lydia frowned. “This doesn’t sound like a normal thing. Remember when I was just drawing the Nemeton, and I wasn’t even really aware that I was doing that?”

“Yeah, but you’re a banshee,” Scott countered. “He’s just human.”

They all fell silent.

“He might not be just human anymore,” Kira’s voice was soft.

They all turned to her, both Scott and Lydia frowning.

“Kira might be right,” Peter chimed in, sounding thoughtful. “No one has ever survived a nogitsune possession. Am I right?”

Kira nodded.

“But you said that it’s not the nogitsune causing this,” Scott objected.

“It’s not the nogitsune _possessing_ him that’s causing this,” Kira clarified. “But whatever is going on with Stiles might be what happens to a host after the nogitsune is… exorcised, I guess, for lack of a better word.”

“So what? What are you saying?” Scott frowned.

“The nogitsune leaving Stiles’ body might still be what’s killing him right now,” Peter murmured softly.

“He is _not_ dying!” Scott’s eyes burned alpha red as he glared at Peter.

“Maybe the Nemeton is trying to do something,” Derek broke the stalemate.

“What do you mean?” Lydia turned to him. Derek didn’t have to remind himself that despite the angelic face and pouty lips, the teenager was a genius. And a banshee. If anyone could figure this out, with Stiles out of commission, it was probably her.

“When you were drawing the Nemeton, what was it like? Did it feel like it was calling to you?” Derek asked.

Lydia nodded.

“I think the Nemeton is calling Stiles now,” he put his thoughts into words. “I found him sleeping on top of the stump of the Nemeton, like it was you know, a bed. A mattress. He was lying down on it.”

“Stiles can sleep on anything,” Scott pursed his lips.

“Maybe so, but he looked really comfortable,” Derek bit his lips. “He looked more peaceful there than he does sleeping in his own bed. It was just, you know, too cold for him to stay there all night. It crossed my mind to just leave him asleep there, except for the cold.”

“You think the Nemeton is trying to help him?” Lydia asked.

Derek shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe? He looked better to me, despite it being so cold. And for a dead tree, I saw a shoot growing out of it when I found Stiles. Maybe it’s not so dead after all.”

“Is Stiles helping the Nemeton grow back?” Lydia frowned thoughtfully.

“Is the Nemeton draining Stiles’ life force so it can grow back?” Scott asked suspiciously.

“I’ll ask my mom,” Kira brought her phone out and began typing into it.

“I’ll ask Deaton,” Scott muttered. “How’d Stiles even find the Nemeton? I mean, I still can’t get to it. I skipped lunch to go look for it today, and I couldn’t find it. Even though I was following your scent from last night.”

“It’s still hiding itself,” Lydia murmured. “It’s calling to Stiles and hiding itself from the rest of us. And it’s growing a new shoot.”

“What does it all mean?” Malia asked.

They exchanged looks, unsure what exactly it did mean. The party broke up soon after that as the teenagers went home to do their homework and who knows what kids got up to these days. Derek and Peter were left, tidying up the Stilinski living room.

“Why does Malia smell so much like pack?” Derek asked him.

“She’s my daughter,” Peter blurted out. “I don’t remember her. But Lydia told me that that is the memory that Talia took from me.”

“Mom took away the memory of a daughter?” Derek frowned. “Why would she do that to you?”

“I don’t know,” Peter sighed. “She had to have a good reason, right?”

Derek had never heard his uncle so hesitant. He nodded. “She had to.”

Peter nodded too.

“Does Malia know?” Derek asked.

“Probably not.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

“I need more information before I do anything…”

“You want to tell her.”

“She’s my daughter,” Peter’s eyes were huge and longing. “She’s family to us. Not too many of us left, Derek.”

Derek nodded. He understood the sentiment. Peter rubbed his hand over Derek’s head and neck, thoroughly scent-marking him and Derek allowed his uncle that comfort, gently marking him right back, although perhaps not quite so blatantly.

“You smell of Stiles,” Peter observed.

Derek grunted. Of course he did. He’d spent a lot of time with the boy in the past twenty-four hours.

“He’s important,” Peter gave him a piercing look. “To you, I mean.”

Derek shrugged. “He’s pack.”

“Huh,” Peter gave him a sympathetic green. “He’s what, sixteen?”

“Seventeen,” Derek corrected him.

“Well, he won’t be jailbait for much longer,” Peter grinned.

“It’s not like that…”

Peter’s wink was enough and Derek turned away from this conversation.

“Just, don’t let him hurt you too much,” Peter was serious now. “He’s vulnerable. He’s fragile right now. But if he makes it through this, he won’t know how much power he has over you. He’s an oblivious teenager.”

“I know,” Derek agreed. “Right now, I’m just focused on making sure he makes it through this.”

Peter gave him a tight hug before he let himself out of the Stilinski house. Derek went back up to Stiles’ room, smiling when he saw that Stiles had maneuvered himself into a strange and uncomfortable looking position, yet still bundled up like a little burrito, under the blankets, snoring now. He picked out a book from Stiles’ piles of books on the floor and settled into the chair to read.


	6. Chapter Six: Derek

**Chapter Six: Derek**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

Derek had fallen asleep on the couch in the living room, settling down there after the sheriff got home later that night. Stiles was still fast asleep in the bed and the elder Stilinski had offered him the guest bedroom or the couch. Derek was tired enough that he had to resist accepting the offer of a bed in case he slept too soundly to notice Stiles if he started sleepwalking again so instead, he settled onto the couch with a blanket that looked like Stiles’ mother might have crocheted it a long time ago.

He sat up when a quiet noise awakened him. His werewolf sight didn’t need much adjustment to see in the darkness of the room, and he saw Stiles standing there, barefoot – even though he had been wearing thick socks earlier – in just a t-shirt and thin pants. He’d somehow shucked off the plaid shirt, the hoodie and Derek’s jacket.

“Stiles?” Derek called out.

The boy turned to him, eyes wide, limpid pools glowing almost amber in the sliver of light coming from the streetlight outside.

“Stiles?” Derek stood, tossing the blanket aside.

Stiles stood there in silence, blinking slowly. Derek cocked his head. Stiles’ heartrate was slow and even, his breathing was regular. He wasn’t really responding to Derek. He sniffed the room, and Stiles smelled like he did when he was sound asleep. Peaceful, calm. Not the usual mélange of hyperactive nervousness, anxiety and arousal.

“Are you awake?” Derek had to ask.

Stiles blinked an answer. Then, as if Derek wasn’t standing there talking to him, he silently turned and headed straight for the front door.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Derek gently caught him by the shoulders and turned him to lead him back up the stairs.

Stiles went with him for a step or two before he turned back and tried to make for the front door again. It took all of Derek’s willpower not to just pick the boy up and carry him back to bed, but he didn’t know if that would wake Stiles, or if waking him up when he was sleepwalking was a good idea, so he just kept trying to herd him back to his room, despite the teenager’s insistence on walking out of the house.

The sheriff came scrambling out of his bedroom, clad in an undershirt and boxers, while Derek tried to maneuver an uncooperative Stiles back up the stairs. “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice hoarse with sleep.

“I think he’s sleepwalking,” Derek tried to coax him up another stair. “Come on, Stiles. Let’s go on back to bed, huh?”

“Son,” the sheriff came down and put a hand on Stiles’ arm, trying to gently tug him up the stairs. “Come on.”

“Is it a bad thing to try and wake him up?” Derek asked the older man.

Stilinski shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

When the sleepwalking teen kept refusing to go up even one more step, Stilinski decided to try to wake his son up. “Stiles!” he called out sharply, giving Stiles’ shoulder a gentle shake. “Stiles, wake up!”

But no matter how loudly he yelled, Stiles remained in that state, ignoring them both and just trying to get back downstairs and presumably leave the house. Derek tried growling fiercely at him, too, to see if maybe a werewolf would make a difference, but nothing seemed to get through. He looked so skinny and pale and fragile in his t-shirt and sleep pants that Derek didn’t want to slap him or do anything too physical to try and wake him, and Stilinski seemed to be of that same mind.

“What do you think?” Stilinski finally asked him, while Derek had his arm around Stiles’ waist, not letting him move down even though he kept trying to break free.

“I think maybe it might be the Nemeton calling him again,” Derek pursed his lips. “It’s what we were discussing earlier, as a possibility.”

“You think a _tree_ is somehow calling my son to it?” the sheriff gaped at him.

All Derek did was let his eyes glow blue, because, werewolf, and the man sighed and nodded.

“OK, good point,” he agreed.

“Maybe we should let him go to the Nemeton,” Derek suggested.

“Are you fucking nuts?” Stilinski erupted. “It’s freezing out there!”

“I know, but we can bundle him up, can’t we?” Derek frowned, trying to get his thoughts in order. “I mean, I really think that the Nemeton is hiding from Scott. It’s why he couldn’t track Stiles last night.”

“Why would it want to hide from Scott?”

“I don’t know,” Derek shrugged. “But there was a shoot growing out of the tree stump where I found Stiles last night.”

“I’ve seen that tree. It’s dead. Like, cut down. Gone for good.”

“I know. But I still saw a shoot growing out of the tree stump.”

“What does that mean?”

“No idea,” Derek shook his head.

“And why is it calling to my son?”

“One theory was that the tree is regenerating by draining Stiles,” Derek posited.

“Then there’s no way we’re letting him go there!”

“I don’t agree with that theory,” Derek had to admit. “When I found Stiles, he was at peace. He was comfortable. He smelled content and sleepy, his sleep was peaceful. We’ve seen how nightmares plague him and what I saw last night was not a nightmare-filled sleep. I would have been OK just letting him sleep there and waking up on his own, except it was just really cold out.”

“So, if we bundle him up…”

“We go with him. See what happens. Maybe he’ll just go to the store to pick up Doritos in his sleep, and maybe he’ll take us to the Nemeton. I wouldn’t be able to predict it,” Derek shrugged.

Stilinski sighed. “You really do know my son,” he had to shake his head. “Going to the store…” he chuckled softly. “He does love Doritos.”

“Could also be Cheetos, I guess,” Derek added. “Although sometimes I think he buys Cheetos just to annoy me.”

Stilinski gave him a questioning look.

“I once told him it smelled horrible and contained no actual cheese. He always seemed to have Cheetos to pull out if I was around after that,” Derek shrugged.

Stilinski laughed. “OK. Let’s try it your way. I’m going to get dressed and then I’ll restrain him while you get dressed. We’ll bundle him up and then go with him wherever it is he’s going, to the store, to the Nemeton, to school. Wherever it may be.”

Derek nodded.

They took a few minutes to dress themselves and Stiles, Derek even picking Stiles up so the sheriff could pull socks and boots onto the boy’s feet. And when Derek finally let him go, the teen walked out the front door and began his sleepwalking journey on foot, forgoing driving tonight, which was a relief. The thought of anyone driving in their sleep was not one that made Derek comfortable. As Stiles walked, Derek and the sheriff walked with him, and Derek texted Peter to let him know that Stiles was on the move and he and the sheriff were going with him, and Stilinski sent Scott a similar message.

Even though he didn’t drive anywhere tonight, it seemed as if it didn’t take very long before Stiles led them into the woods, into the Preserve and fairly soon, Stilinski was nervously shining his flashlight around, carefully picking his way through the underbrush.

“I guess we’re headed to the Nemeton, then,” he muttered, keeping his voice low.

Derek nodded. It was definitely not a Doritos run. He couldn’t be sure, especially since the Nemeton always played tricks on them and made it difficult for anyone to find it, but Stiles seemed to be heading straight for the heart of the Preserve. He moved much more gracefully than he normally did when he was awake and Derek felt the completely inappropriate urge to laugh about what they were doing, except Stiles was leading them to the Nemeton, and they had no idea what the hell was going on.

Peter caught up with them, walking next to Derek as Derek and the sheriff flanked Stiles.

“I’ve never seen him so quiet,” Peter remarked.

Stilinski gave him a look but didn’t say anything.

Finally, they got to the clearing and even though it wasn’t a full moon, it seemed as if the clearing was bathed in a silvery light of some kind, and Derek could see that there were a few more shoots growing out of the stump. Stilinski shone his flashlight on the tree and Derek could make out how green the leaves were.

Stiles clambered up onto the stump and laid himself down, closing his eyes, breathing easily. Derek could hear his pulse and it was steady and calm, like someone still peacefully asleep. Stiles had settled down on his stomach again, face pillowed on his hands, sprawled comfortably on the tree stump as if it were a big, huge bed.

“This is how you found him last night?” Stilinski asked.

“Uh-huh,” Derek nodded.

“Can you tell what this tree might doing to him?”

Derek met the sheriff’s eyes. “I don’t know,” he shook his head. “But it doesn’t feel like it’s hurting him. He doesn’t smell like he’s in any pain.”

Peter was circling the huge stump, eyeing both the sleeping boy and the apparent regrowth that the tree seemed to be accomplishing.

“What does this all mean?” Peter turned to Derek. “Why is the Nemeton calling Stiles? And why is it growing again?”

“It can’t be anything good,” a quiet voice made them all turn. It was Deaton. They had all been so engrossed in the Nemeton and what Stiles was doing that neither Peter nor Derek had heard the druid’s approach.

“Why do you say that?” Peter asked, tilting his head and looking at the druid, his expression thoughtful.

“How can it be anything good?” Deaton frowned. “It freed the nogitsune.”

“Only because we did the ice bath ritual which weakened the Nemeton even further,” Lydia interjected. “And that opened a door inside Scott, Stiles and Allison. They were all being tormented by the nogitsune before it finally got through and possessed Stiles.”

Derek saw that Scott, Lydia, Malia and Kira had all come with Deaton. No questions then on who might have called Deaton. Peter gave Malia a half smile and acknowledged Lydia with a nod. She was by far the smartest of them all, especially while Stiles was out of commission. Lydia walked right up to the Nemeton, even though she had her arms crossed defensively around her. The tree still frightened her. Derek could smell it on her. And even though she was afraid of it, and afraid for Stiles, she was still there trying to see if she could help her friend.

Derek looked around and saw Malia and Kira both walk over to the tree, going with Lydia. Scott stood with Deaton.

“Lydia’s right,” Peter agreed. “We made the Nemeton vulnerable, first, by cutting it down. And then the Darach happened. The ice bath ritual. And finally the nogitsune was freed. Even a cut down Nemeton was still enough to contain it until all of these other things happened.”

“He doesn’t look like he’s being hurt?” Lydia turned to look at Derek.

“He smells like he’s just sleeping peacefully,” Derek told her. “Same as last night. If it wasn’t so cold and he so underdressed last night, I would have considered just letting him sleep.”

“On the Nemeton?” Lydia frowned.

“He _has_ been having a lot of trouble sleeping,” Stilinski sided with Derek.

“We don’t know what the Nemeton is doing to him right now,” Deaton objected.

“Could it be another possession?” Scott asked.

“My mother said that the oni would have closed that door, if it were still open, on anyone that it marks with the ‘self’ kanji,” Kira spoke up.

“Stiles has faced the oni twice,” Derek added. “I don’t think he’s possessed.”

“But why is he sleepwalking to the Nemeton?” Scott asked. “Something is making him do it.”

“It doesn’t mean he’s possessed. Lydia was drawn to the Nemeton, too. While the Darach was sacrificing people,” Derek pointed to the redhead.

“She was drawn to it because the Darach was killing people,” Scott argued.

“Speaking of, Lydia’s a banshee,” Peter turned to the girl. “Do you feel like screaming? Do you sense death approaching?”

Lydia frowned for a moment before she shook her head. “I don’t hear anything,” she said fiercely. “No whispers, no humming, no weird noises that I need to interpret. I hear nothing.”

Peter gave Scott and Deaton a look, gesturing to Lydia triumphantly. The banshee was not sensing death. Stiles was fine on the Nemeton.

“Why are you so convinced that this can’t be anything good?” Derek asked the druid. “Maybe the Nemeton is helping Stiles.”

“Why would the Nemeton help Stiles?” Deaton scoffed.

“He survived a nogitsune possession,” Derek suggested.

“Stiles also always tries to save people,” Malia spoke up. “He only accepted the nogitsune to save me. When we were in Eichen House.”

Deaton glared at Malia.

“I lived in the forest for years alone,” Malia continued. “This was a place that none of the animals liked to come to. Not because we feared the tree, but because the tree told us that it was doing everything it could to keep something bad from getting free. The big tree was trying to keep us all safe, and it needed all the energy it had left to do it, since someone had cut it down.”

“Something bad?” Scott murmured.

“The nogitsune,” Kira nodded. “The tree had been its prison for seventy years, after my mom put it there.”

“And now that it’s not being a supernatural prison, it’s trying to grow back?” Lydia asked.

“But why does it keep calling Stiles to it?” the sheriff asked.

“I don’t know, but I think we should get him away from the tree,” Scott sounded concerned. “At least until we know what it’s doing.”

“Stiles is not well,” Derek countered. “The nogitsune left him, but when it did, it made Stiles sick.”

“You don’t have any proof of that,” Deaton waved it away.

“I can smell it,” Derek frowned. “He hasn’t smelled healthy for a while.”

“What are you saying?” Scott asked.

“I think the Nemeton is trying to help Stiles,” Derek voiced his thoughts.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Deaton sneered. “There is no reason why a Nemeton would engage with someone like Stiles. He was possessed by a nogitsune. He gave in to the demon. He was _weak_.”

“What?” Scott gaped at his mentor. “ _No_. He did it to save Malia’s life. He resisted for so long, and when he finally did give in, it was to save a life. Not to take it.”

“He wasn’t weak,” Lydia agreed with Scott. “He was strong. He resisted the nogitsune, even as it was possessing him. He did his best to minimize the damage that it was causing. He fought it all the way. He fought it so hard that the demon split them in half so he could continue to use Stiles as a host, without Stiles being in there messing everything up for him.”

“I think splitting them into two is what’s making Stiles sick,” the thought came to Derek. “Like the nogitsune kept all the positive physical attributes in the half that he stayed in…”

“And he left Stiles with a body that didn’t have any of the strengths that he should have had, and only the weaknesses,” Lydia finished his thought.

“It’s why he’s sick,” Derek and Lydia nodded at each other.

“No host has ever survived being possessed by a nogitsune,” Kira added. “ _No one_. My mother would know.”

“It’s just a regression to the mean,” Deaton shook his head. “If hosts don’t survive the nogitsune, then Stiles was meant to die, which is why he’s dying. That’s the mean.”

“No!” Stilinski denied hotly.

“Unacceptable,” Peter cut in, just as forcefully.

“I don’t accept it either,” Malia spoke up.

“Or me,” both Lydia and Kira agreed.

Scott looked conflicted. “Why would you think that Stiles should die?” he asked the druid. “He’s my best friend. He’s never hurt anyone.”

“Tell that to Allison Argent,” Deaton bit out.

“That wasn’t Stiles’ fault!” Derek growled. “The nogitsune did all of those things. Not Stiles.”

“You’re blaming the victim,” Lydia agreed, glaring at the druid.

“What’s going on, guys?” a familiar voice made them all turn towards the Nemeton.

Stiles was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, and yawning, looking for all the world like he just woke up from a nap instead of like a person who had been sleepwalking, drawn to a magical tree stump, before he laid down to sleep on the thing.

“Stiles!” the sheriff tried to scrambled up the tree, and Derek hopped on, pulling him up with ease.

Derek knelt down next to him, avoiding any of the new shoots that were sprouting, not wanting to damage the tree. Strangely enough, the surface of the stump felt warm to the touch, as if it had learned that Stiles needed to stay warm and was doing its best to accommodate.

The teenager looked around, frowning when he realized he was in the woods again. He looked at the fact that this time he was bundled up and quirked an eyebrow at Derek. “Did I actually decide to dress warmly before sleepwalking to the Nemeton again?” he asked, grinning.

“No, that was me and Derek, making sure you didn’t get another case of almost-hypothermia,” the sheriff grumbled, pulling his son into a hug. “How are you feeling, kiddo?”

“OK,” Stiles yawned. “Just still sleepy. And tired. But good. I guess.”

“Are you warm enough?” Derek asked, since Stiles had just constantly been cold, even indoors.

“I think so,” Stiles thought for a second. “Yes. I’m actually not freezing right now.”

“But we’re in the Preserve, at night, in the winter,” Scott threw up his hands.

“The Nemeton is not your friend,” Deaton called out. “It’s upsetting the balance.”

“If the balance means Stiles dies, then I’m fine with it upsetting the balance,” Derek called back.

Stiles made a face. “Could you guys maybe go argue somewhere else?” he complained. “I’m tired and the Nemeton is warm.” He made to lie down again, but the sheriff kept him sitting up.

“Let’s go home, Stiles,” he smiled at his son. “Go back to your own bed. Besides, you know you can’t sleep without your pillow.”

Stiles thought about it for a short moment before he nodded. “OK,” he agreed.

He tried to get to his feet, but he was so wobbly that Derek ended up just picking him up and cradling him to his body again.

“Could we maybe make this look less like a bridal carry and more, I don’t know, butch?” Stiles complained.

“What, you want me to put you over my shoulder? A fireman’s carry?” Derek pretended that he was shifting Stiles around to do just that.

“No!” Stiles laughed. “Alright, alright. You win. This is fine. Bridal carry it is.”

Stilinski rolled his eyes, but they walked to the edge of the stump and Peter helped Stilinski down while Derek gracefully hopped down, as if he wasn’t even carrying Stiles. He was still too lightweight in Derek’s arms, he had lost quite a bit of weight, but he was awake and looking around.

“Wow, the Nemeton really is growing back,” Stiles remarked, his eyes wide.

“It’s not expending all its energy being a prison anymore,” Malia’s voice made him jump. “It can try to heal itself.”

“Malia!” he croaked. “Oh look. It’s Malia. And Lydia. And Kira. Scott. Everyone’s here. Why is everyone here? Doctor Deaton’s here, too?”

“We came because your dad said you were sleepwalking again,” Scott’s smile was genuine. “You feeling OK, Stiles?”

“Sure,” Stiles yawned and leaned his head on Derek’s chest in a move that spoke of the kind of trust that Derek had not thought would ever be extended to him again, not after what Kate had done to him and to his family.

Deaton strode up to the Nemeton, frowning at it. He reached down to pull at one of the new stalks growing out of the huge stump, and when he did, Stiles’ body spasmed and jerked in Derek’s arms, and he cried out in pain. Deaton pulled his hand back even though the stalk had not been pulled out.

“Ow!” Stiles yelled when he caught his breath. “Quit that!”

“Why are you hurting the Nemeton?” Peter asked.

“Things are not balanced,” Deaton insisted. “There is always a regression to the mean.”

“What does that even mean?” Kira asked.

“It means that everything will always go back to the middle,” Scott answered. “Not bad. Not good. Just the mean. The middle.”

Deaton nodded at Scott. “Balanced,” he added. “Equilibrium. That is what druids are charged with maintaining. The Nemeton is affecting the balance.”

“Maybe the mean needs to be adjusted,” Stiles threw out, struggling until Derek set him on his feet, although the werewolf draped Stiles’ arm over his shoulder and let the boy use him to stay upright. He could feel Stiles’ legs starting to tremble. He was still not himself.

“The mean is the mean,” Deaton snapped. “It’s not something that can be adjusted.”

“Nuh-uh,” Stiles’ snarkiness made Derek want to roll his eyes and smile at the same time. “In math, you add or deduct a big number to your set, and your average, your mean, is adjusted. Lydia, tell them.”

“Stiles is right,” Lydia agreed.

“What if the mean in Beacon Hills was already off,” Stiles suggested. “When the Nemeton was cut down, maybe that changed things. The Nemeton was supposed to be guarding Beacon Hills, maintaining the balance.”

“With the help of the Hale pack,” Derek added. “There have been Hales on this land for over a century. Maybe even two centuries. Working with the Nemeton to keep the balance, even if we didn’t know that the Nemeton was guarding over us.”

“The Nemeton was cut down. As was the Hale pack,” Peter joined in.

“The mean was adjusted by these deductions,” Stiles continued. “These massive deductions changed what the mean was in Beacon Hills.”

“And by not letting the Nemeton recover, you’re keeping the mean at this unnaturally low level,” Lydia’s eyes widened at the thought. “It’s now at an artificially low average. It needs to be allowed to recover. You’re helping to maintain an imbalance, Doctor Deaton.”

“Impossible,” Deaton objected.

“The math is sound,” Lydia insisted.

“Who knew that math would solve things even in the supernatural world?” Stiles joked.

“Math solves _everything_ , Stiles, in every world,” Lydia rolled her eyes, although she gave Stiles a sweet smile.


	7. Chapter Seven: Stiles

**Chapter Seven: Stiles**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

There was a long moment of silence where it seemed to Stiles that everyone just was staring at each other and exchanging meaningful or questioning glances. He caught Derek’s eye and gave him a small grin. He knew that Derek was the only reason he wasn’t crumpled up in a heap on the forest floor, and he was grateful for the support. Hell, Derek was supporting him both physically by keeping him upright, but he was also supporting him by backing him up with the whole adjusting the mean argument that they were having. He tried not to enjoy the physical closeness too much, because he knew that Derek wasn’t into him.

No matter how much Stiles wanted to believe that Derek reciprocated his feelings, or hell, if Derek even thought of him as a friend and not a pesky pack member that always needed his help, he knew that he couldn’t allow himself to get too used to having Derek around and depending on him. In Stiles’ experience, he wasn’t usually able to depend on very many people. Not even his dad, at times, because he was the sheriff and had an important job, and he needed to make sure that the entire city of Beacon Hills and the surrounding Beacon County was safe and might not be able to make sure that Stiles wasn’t home alone and afraid to be by himself once his mother had died.

Besides, it wasn’t like Stiles deserved any of the attention that Derek was lavishing on him. He had been the instrument of so much death and destruction. He’d killed Allison, for god’s sakes. He was definitely not going to think that he would be entitled to any comfort at this point in time, although he didn’t have the strength to do anything but accept it, absorbing all the affection and warmth that Derek had offered to him.

“No,” Deaton shook his head, his expression darkening. “No. The Nemeton was cut down and now it’s trying to come back to life. That will change the balance and I cannot allow that to happen.”

He bent down and viciously yanked out one of the little stems sprouting out of the Nemeton. At the exact same time, the worst pain Stiles had ever experienced went through his body, and he cried out, feeling as if he had been stabbed in the chest with a hot knife and the knife dragged down his body, as if trying to split him into pieces. Before his legs could give out on him, Derek had swung him back up into his arms into another bridal carry. Stiles ignored the voices calling his name, doing all he could to just contain the pained whimpers and curled himself into Derek. Derek was safety. Derek had always looked out for him.

He felt Derek’s bare hand worm under the layers he was wearing and a little of the pain began draining out of him. Derek groaned and staggered a little, apparently the pain was great enough to make even a werewolf struggle to cope.

“Gotta love the magic fingers,” Stiles gave Derek a smile that was probably borderline insane. Peter came over, took Stiles’ hand and began taking his pain, too, the older ‘wolf gasping when he took in the pain.

“Stop doing that!” Stiles’ dad yelled at the vet. “You’re hurting him! He seems to be tied to that tree now!”

“It will restore the balance,” Deaton was stubborn.

“You’re going to keep killing the Nemeton, even if it kills Stiles too?” Scott gasped.

“If it means that the equilibrium is maintained, then yes,” Deaton stated it baldly.

“No!” Scott shook his head.

Stiles was slowly feeling better. He could feel himself sweating with the pain of the Nemeton, and when he looked around, he saw that Malia, Kira and Lydia had all gravitated closer to where Derek stood, with him in his arms, Peter still clamped onto his wrist and continuing to take his pain, Stiles’ dad standing in front of them protectively, while Scott and Deaton remained on the other side of the Nemeton. It was an interesting division. Stiles didn’t know quite what it meant.

“If it is for the greater good, then Stiles should die,” Deaton insisted. “He might not die. We don’t know that for sure. We can look for a way to separate him from the Nemeton and then we can keep the Nemeton at bay.”

“But if we can’t separate Stiles from the Nemeton?” Scott asked.

“Then perhaps that is his fate,” Deaton said, somewhat fatalistically.

“I don’t accept that,” Stiles’ dad barked. “I do _not_ accept that you think it’s OK for my son to die, that my son _should_ die to keep this precious balance of yours. There is not one universe in which I’ll stand by and let you do anything to hurt my son. Just because _you_ think the balance needs to be restored and the only way to do this is that you let the death of an innocent, minor child slide, doesn’t make it the right thing to do. I won’t let you let my son die.”

“Or maybe you might even _cause_ it?” Peter added with a snarl.

“Doctor Deaton wouldn’t hurt Stiles on purpose!” Scott objected.

“Unless it was absolutely necessary,” Deaton muttered, causing another shocked gasp out of Scott.

“And when would it be absolutely necessary to kill a seventeen-year-old boy, Deaton?” Peter argued. “Is this how you justified the deaths of almost every member of our pack? That we all had to die because it restored the balance?”

Deaton glared at him. “My alpha and her pack died because _that_ man betrayed us!” he pointed to Derek.

Derek, who was still taking the pain from Stiles’ body, staggered again, and this time Stiles’ dad helped to steady him. Stiles had no doubt that if he were a werewolf, he would be able to smell the guilt coming off of him, hell, he was a puny little human and he could tell that Derek was once again flagellating himself for what happened to his family.

“A psychopathic hunter almost twice his age took advantage of a fifteen-year-old boy, manipulated him, played on his pain, made him fall in love with her and used him as a way to murder the rest of his pack,” Peter countered, his tone stern. “He wasn’t at fault. He was a child and completely unprepared for a psychopath’s deceit. She targeted him because _we_ were all not looking, because we left him open and vulnerable. We didn’t give him the support he needed after his first great loss. We were the adults in the pack. We should have seen what was going on.”

“Y-y-you know?” Derek’s eyes were wide and scared as he looked at Peter.

“About Kate?”

Derek nodded hesitantly.

“I found out, when I was recovering and supposed to be in a coma,” Peter’s smile was sad.

“You were completely insane then,” Stiles had to add.

“And?” Peter rolled his eyes. What was it with Hales and their penchant for rolling their eyes at Stiles?

“You didn’t specifically go after Derek, to kill him, I mean,” Stiles found himself clutching Derek’s shirt again. As if his fragile little human bones would make a difference if Peter wanted to get to Derek now. “Like you did all of the others who had a hand, even a small hand, in the fire.”

“In the murders of my family,” Peter agreed. “No, I didn’t go after Derek.”

“But why not?” Derek asked, looking lost. Stiles realized then that he wasn’t the only one carrying a lot of misplaced guilt. There was no way Stiles blamed the guy for what Kate Argent, the crazy psychopathic bitch, had done to his entire pack. Had continued to do to him, and then to the rest of the new pack that Peter had been trying to make. He made a mental note to keep reminding Derek of this, and help him release some of the guilt that he was carrying around.

“You’re my nephew, Derek,” Peter frowned. “You were fifteen. You were a child, well under the age of consent. How can any of it be your fault when it happened under our noses? We should have been more vigilant. I might have been insane, but even I could see that blaming you when you were so busy blaming yourself to even live a real life would be ridiculous. If anything, I thought that killing you to put you out of your misery would have been a kindness, and _that_ I will admit, I did think about. Even when I needed the strength of a larger pack to build my own strength.”

“Hey, now,” Stiles’ dad interrupted. “Let’s not just talk about murders and thoughts of murders, even if you think it’s a mercy killing, right out in the open like that, huh? I’m still the sheriff of this town.”

“I’m not going to kill my nephew,” Peter turned to Stiles’ dad and gave him a smile. “I’m just explaining my thoughts, back when I was _truly_ insane.”

“Yeah, now you’re only just _mostly_ insane,” Stiles muttered, and he counted it a win when his dad, Peter, and even Derek chuckled at that. Scott gave him a half-hearted grin from the other side of the stump.

“And where were _you_ , the emissary to the Hale pack, when this was all happening?” Stiles croaked out across the massive Nemeton stump, trying to make his voice sound stronger, as if he wasn’t still wracked with pain by what the vet had done to the little Nemeton sprout. “Why didn’t _you_ protect the Hales?”

“I _did_ ,” Deaton said fiercely. “I _tried_. My defenses just weren’t enough.”

“If you’re a druid and a really powerful one, and you’re an adult and the pack emissary and _you_ couldn’t protect the Hales against what was about to happen, then why in the hell would you blame a child for what happened?” Lydia spoke up.

“Also, why didn’t you help Laura and Derek after the fire?” Stiles asked. “Why did you let them think they were alone in the world and let them run because they felt they had no other way to keep themselves safe?”

“I…” Deaton’s face fell. “I don’t know. It didn’t feel right that Laura would be the alpha. That I would be her emissary.”

“So, because Talia died, you quit being the Hale pack emissary?” Lydia shook her head. “Just like that?”

“Is that allowed?” Kira asked.

“Way to show your loyalty to the pack, dude,” Stiles added.

“What would Scott have to do for you to turn your back on him?” Malia asked, blunt as ever. “If Scott tried to save Stiles’ life instead of doing what you think is right, would that do it? If Scott refused to kill the Nemeton, if he won’t kill Stiles if that’s what it takes to maintain your precious balance, would that make you turn away from him the way you turned away from Derek?”

“Would you even tell him if that happened?” Lydia asked. “Or would you just pretend to be his ally while waiting for him to fail which would prove to you the point you were making, even though he wouldn’t have failed if he had had a proper emissary backing him up?”

Deaton looked unsure of himself for the first time in Stiles’ experience.

“Scott’s a true alpha,” Lydia added. “He would never kill anyone, and he would never allow anyone to be killed if he could help it. Especially not if that person was practically his brother.”

“What would you do then?” Malia asked. “Would you abandon Scott like you abandoned what was left of the Hale pack?”

The druid stood there, and Scott backed away from him. A few steps, but a telling few steps. Deaton was Scott’s mentor. Scott’s own father was a complete douchebag and Stiles had always been happy to share his own dad with Scott, but he had really responded well when Doctor Deaton had taken him under his wing, even before the whole hoop-la with being turned into a werewolf. Deaton had given him a job, given him an outlet for his caring nature and taught him how to help sick animals. Deaton had shown him that things could be different in the world, different than the things he saw come from his own father.

Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles saw a glowing silvery light moving towards the clearing. He gestured towards it with his hands, without letting go of Derek’s shirt. “Incoming,” he croaked, readying himself to collapse onto the ground while the wolves did their thing, but he felt Derek stiffen and tighten his hold instead of letting him go in order to jump into action.

It was a black wolf. The wolf was huge, with fluffy-looking black fur which made it look friendly and cuddly, but it was glowing in an ethereal, silver light which made it supernatural. And besides, wolves were wild animals. They weren’t supposed to be cuddly, even if they weren’t supernaturally glowing. Stiles had to remind himself of that as the wolf padded slowly into the clearing. Stiles’ eyes widened as he watched it, his mouth falling open in shock as the creature jumped onto the stump of the Nemeton and stood there, turning its head and catching each and every person’s gaze. When it turned to Stiles, he saw that its eyes glowed red now. A familiar red. _Alpha_ red.

“Mom,” Derek whispered, and he clutched Stiles to him even closer, making the teen whimper a little.

“Bones, dude, fragile little human bones,” Stiles whined at him as his bones creaked in protest to the overly tight grip.

With an apologetic look, Derek loosened his grip, although he still held Stiles securely against his body. Peter’s hand dropped away from Stiles’ wrist and even though the pain returned, it was not as bad as it had been when Deaton first pulled the sprout out of the stump. The very stump that the glowing wolf now stood on, gazing calmly at each of them.

In the blink of an eye, the wolf transformed and became a woman, clad in a simple white shift, and her body was still glowing with that same silvery glow. Stiles couldn’t help but be grateful that she didn’t end up a naked lady because he was really not equipped to look at naked beautiful women what with the pain he was in, and even more, because the lady was apparently Derek’s mother. A boner for both Derek and his mom would have been more than awkward for everyone all around.

Stiles could definitely see the resemblance between Derek and the woman, and Peter and the woman. She turned to Peter and Derek – and Stiles, since he was right there – and smiled at them, a sweet, loving smile.

“Mom…” Derek whispered.

“Hello, Derek,” her voice was soft but somehow echoed through the clearing and Stiles could tell them everyone could hear her clearly. 

“Is it really you?” Derek sounded like a lost little boy.

“Yes, baby,” came the gentle response. The glowing woman looked around the clearing and bestowed upon him a smile that was filled with pride and approval. “I’m glad that you heeded my message to you and you’re staying to protect Beacon Hills.”

Derek nodded dumbly, his mouth falling open, and tears filled his eyes. Stiles found himself hugging Derek tightly. He didn’t know how he would react to see his own dead mother speaking to him, but he was pretty sure that it would be the kind of punch to the gut that would rob him of speech, and probably smother him with emotions that he hadn’t felt in years.

“Peter,” Talia’s smile was as gentle and loving to her baby brother as it had been to her son.

“I’m so sorry I killed Laura,” Peter blurted out. “I just needed to avenge us all…”

“I know,” Talia said simply.

“I was insane with pain and loneliness…”

“You felt that your pack had abandoned you.”

“My pack _had_ abandoned me,” Peter’s voice wobbled. “They left me for dead. Or that was what I believed.”

“I know, Peter.”

Stiles watched as she nodded to him, full of love and forgiveness. He realized then that no matter how creepy Peter tended to behave, he was hiding the same pain, the same loss that Derek was. He, too, had lost his pack. And then Laura and Derek had left him in Beacon Hills when they fled, worried that hunters would continue to come after them. Stiles imagined that he’d be as insane and filled with vengeance, too, if he’d awakened after years of a painful existence that looked like a coma to everyone else, but was just werewolf healing slowly and painfully bringing him back to life. After all those years of pain and suffering, years of anger fueling this recovery, anger at the deaths of his family, anger at his new alpha abandoning him to his fate, Stiles could see himself going on a killing spree too. He would find those that had killed his family, and he would avenge their deaths. And he wasn’t even a werewolf.

Maybe before his pack had been murdered, Peter might have been different. Peter himself had hinted that Derek had been more like Stiles before Paige’s death, so maybe Peter might have been somewhat different, too. Maybe he had been less full of malice, but more filled with mischief. It seemed as if Derek once worshiped his uncle. Stiles couldn’t really imagine how either of them must feel for everything that had happened to their pack. But hopefully now they could band together and move forward for the good of Beacon Hills and their new pack.

Talia Hale turned to the girls and smiled at them, and Stiles saw that Lydia and Kira both smiled back, albeit hesitantly, and Malia just looked confused. Stiles had to avert his eyes. Malia made him feel so guilty. He remembered losing his virginity to her, but he honestly didn’t know how to feel about it. It had been at Eichen House, he had been dosed with several different drugs, plus the letharia vulpina, and the nogitsune was hammering through his defenses, trying to get him. Malia had offered him comfort and he had taken it, and he couldn’t help but feel guilty about it. She was beautiful, of course, and he was a red-blooded teenager who had never even come close to having sex before, but she really wasn’t his type. Stiles tended towards scarily smart alpha types rather than lost in the woods coyote girls. Stiles wasn’t even sure if Malia understood what consent was, and he wasn’t sure if he had been the one at fault, or if he was the one whose consent had not been given in any kind of legitimate way.

It was all so confusing, and Stiles decided that he wasn’t going to think about it, especially not while the magical dead alpha werewolf was still standing on the Nemeton. She must be there for a reason and Stiles shouldn’t be lollygagging and woolgathering while she was there.

Talia had turned her attention to Scott. “A true alpha,” she smiled. “Beacon Hills is blessed to have you as a protector.”

Scott puffed up a little with pride, and Stiles had to smile proudly at his best friend. Whatever else, Scott was a good person and he did try hard to get the best outcome. He tried to protect his mom and his friends to the best of his abilities. Killing was not something Stiles would ever associate with Scott. Which, you know, a little bit of an issue when the things that came after them tended not to have the same hang ups about dealing out death, but Stiles had long understood and accepted Scott’s nature. It was who he was, and that was who Stiles loved.

“Alan,” Talia’s expression turned serious when her gaze fell on her former emissary.


	8. Chapter Eight: Stiles

**Chapter Eight: Stiles**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

_“Alan,” Talia’s expression turned serious when her gaze fell on her former emissary._

“Alpha,” Deaton bent his neck in supplication.

“Alan,” Talia sounded sad. “I’m not your alpha anymore.”

Derek’s breath came out in a half sob and Stiles held on to him as tightly as he could, trying to offer him comfort.

Deaton nodded. He understood that Talia was still dead and that she was no longer his alpha.

“I am here to bring you a message,” Talia continued. “You must decide which path to walk, Alan. The path that brings the true balance back to Beacon Hills, or the path where you believe that the death of an innocent child is a price worth paying to keep things the way they are. This path will lead you all into darkness and destruction.”

“A druid cannot actively participate in anything unless it is in order to affect change to bring the world back into balance,” Deaton argued.

“The day that the death of an innocent child,” and here Talia pointed to Stiles, “brings _balance_ to this world is the day that the balance is irrevocably changed.

Deaton frowned at her.

“I regret that I allowed you to keep your distance from us when you first became my emissary,” Talia’s eyes were sad. “Emissaries are also part of the pack.”

“There is precedent in keeping your emissary a secret.”

“Only in times of war and strife,” Talia shook her head. “Not when things are peaceful and prosperous. Even if we were to hide who you were to us from the world, I should not have allowed you to distance yourself from the pack and hide from them that you were our pack emissary. Pack members should know who they are to each other. Packs have a hierarchy for a reason, and I gave you too much leeway and allowed you to not become part of our hierarchy.”

“It is the druid way.”

“It is _your_ way,” Talia corrected him. “Druids have been Hale pack emissaries for many generations and none of them have ever been a secret from the pack itself.”

Deaton looked stunned.

“You cannot be part of the pack if there are no real pack bonds, Alan,” Talia said, keeping her tone gentle.

“I had a bond with you.”

“But no one else,” Talia sighed. “It’s why you couldn’t give Laura the same loyalty that you gave me. A loyalty that you _owed_ her, as she was the Hale alpha after my death. She was my heir and would have been the Hale alpha after I died, regardless of when it happened. You would have been her emissary anyway, even if it happened later in life. But you did not offer her or Derek any help, and neither did you do anything for Peter when my surviving children felt that all they could do was run from a danger that neither you nor I prepared them for.”

Deaton looked down, shame flooding his expression.

“You waited and watched, keeping your involvement in what happened a secret. You didn’t even do anything when you knew that a rogue alpha was on the loose. You did not protect Beacon Hills,” Talia continued gravely. “You made an oath to me and to my pack that you would always protect the pack and protect Beacon Hills, our territory.”

Deaton’s lips were pressed together. “It wasn’t like that,” he denied it.

“It _was_ , Alan. It was exactly like that,” Talia was gentle but firm in her reproach. “ _You_ should not have let Laura come back here without any knowledge of what Peter was turning into. _You_ should have been looking after Peter while he was in the hospital, recovering. You knew he wasn’t dead and since he was a werewolf, that he would recover in time, but you did nothing. And after Laura was killed, _you_ should have been the one to stop Peter when he became the alpha and went on a rampage. You shouldn’t have waited for hunters to come back to Beacon Hills to do so. You swore an oath to protect Beacon Hills, yet you did nothing. Instead, you allowed hunters to gain ground on the Hale pack territory.”

“I broke my oath,” Deaton murmured, his normally calm demeanor finally broken.

“You did,” Talia nodded.

“This is the message I bring to you all,” Talia turned away from Deaton and she seemed to glow even brighter. “Beacon Hills was always a beacon for all things supernatural. The Nemeton has protected this territory with the help of other supernatural creatures for thousands of years. There has been a werewolf pack, the Hale pack in one form or another, on this land for over eight hundred years.”

Stiles’ eyes widened at that. That was a long line of Hales that had stood with the Nemeton against the world.

“We were not made aware of the role that the Nemeton played,” Talia continued. “We just lived here and protected our territory. The Nemeton says that it was cut down before I became the alpha, which weakened it but did not completely kill it. This greatly upset the balance, but we Hales were still here, protecting this land. It wasn’t until after most of our pack was murdered, and the survivors scattered, that things worsened.”

“The Beacon Hills murder rate went up after the Hale house fire,” Stiles’ dad murmured. “Much higher than the national average.”

“Beacon Hills lies on the crossroads of many ley lines. It is a powerful territory,” Talia agreed. “Without its guardians, the land became the beacon it once was, calling all who were powerful to it. Including those that were evil.”

Stiles nodded. It all made sense.

“The Nemeton is trying to regain its power, and return to its work of protecting this land,” Talia continued. “At this time, it has chosen the child and tied its fate to him.”

“The child? What child?” Stiles stammered. “Me?”

Talia turned to him, and her eyes glowed red. “Yes,” she nodded. “You.”

“But why?” Stiles’ dad asked. “He’s just a kid. And he’s human. He’s not a werewolf or a banshee or whatever the hell else supernatural beings there might be in this world!”

“He is the only human to have ever survived being possessed by a nogitsune,” she explained solemnly. “This means he has become both more human and less human than before.”

“I don’t understand,” Stiles frowned.

“The nogitsune chose you because it saw you as the one with the strongest sense of self, the strongest willpower.”

“I’m just a skinny human kid!”

“You know who you are Mieczysław,” Stiles had to gasp at her usage of his real name. And she had said it perfectly, too. “You know what you stand for, and you are willing to do whatever it takes to keep those you love and care about safe. You were the biggest challenge of the three with doorways opened into your minds. The nogitsune is a fox demon. They are… playful, although their playground consists of strife and chaos. You were the one it decided would be the most difficult mind to break into, and so it chose you. And you were able not only to resist it for an unprecedented amount of time, but even once you let it in, you were able to continue to resist it, to affect its actions enough to temper, even slightly, the outcome that it sought.”

Stiles blushed at that.

“You feel guilt for allowing it in,” Talia continued. “But you are fully aware that you had no choice. It used people to get to you. And then you were so strong that it ended up choosing to let you go as you were… cramping its style.” She grinned at the use of the colloquialism.

“But what do you mean my son is more _and_ less human because of it?” the sheriff demanded.

“He is more, because he was able to expel the nogitsune without losing his own life, or his own self. But he is less because,” Talia sighed, “the nogitsune took some things away, things that will weaken him and kill him. Things that humans cannot live without.”

“Is that why he’s been so sick?” Derek asked.

“Death is imminent for the child who survived the nogitsune,” Talia nodded sadly.

Stiles’ heart began pounding. The ghost of Talia Hale was telling all of them that Stiles was dying. _Dying_. Stiles didn’t even know how to deal with that. It was one thing to die in the heat of the moment, when the kanima was attacking them, or the crazed alpha, or the alpha pack, or the darach. But it was something else to contemplate death coming for him when nothing else was threatening the pack. He didn’t want to have to just sit and _wait_ for the day that he would leave his dad, and Scott, and Derek, and everyone.

“But it is not too late yet,” she continued. “The Nemeton has chosen to tie its own survival to Mieczysław’s.”

“Is that your name?” Derek whispered to Stiles. “Mitch…”

“There’s a reason I go by Stiles,” Stiles whispered back, making a hushing motion with his hand. This was hopefully the good part. The part that might mean that he wouldn’t have to die.

“What does that mean?” Stiles’ dad asked.

“It means that if you choose to break the connection that the Nemeton has made with your son, he _will_ die. And once he dies, so too will the Nemeton, and it will follow that the packs will perish or scatter, and Beacon Hills will become a desolate place,” Talia raised a hand, palm upwards, and a different light began shining.

Stiles’ eyes widened when it began lighting up on Deaton’s side of the tree stump, the sun shone in vivid reds and oranges on a dead tree stump, and all the land a dried out husk, cracked and empty, as far as the eye could see.

“Beacon Hills will become a place of evil and death,” Talia intoned. “It will become the place where hope comes to die.”

“Who said climate change wasn’t a scary thing,” Stiles muttered, and he didn’t need to look at Derek to know that he was rolling his eyes.

Scott gasped at the desolate image and backed away from Deaton, moving closer to Stiles’ side of the tree. “What happens if we let the Nemeton grow back?” he asked.

Talia raised her other hand and immediately half of the Nemeton appeared to be a fully grown tree, surrounded by lush green foliage. “If the Nemeton grows back, Stiles will live, the packs will continue to protect the Nemeton and this land, and it will flourish,” slowly they were shown images of Derek, Peter, Cora and then Malia. “Beacon Hills will become peaceful, the way it was for the thousands of years before the Nemeton was cut down.”

They were all exchanging glances at that, and Malia frowned at the image of herself being lumped in with the Hales. Lydia had whispered to Stiles that whole story a couple of weeks ago and he was pretty shocked by it. Malia being Peter’s biological daughter had been completely unexpected.

“And my son will live?” Stiles’ dad’s voice broke at the question.

“He will live,” Talia nodded gravely, “and he will belong to the Nemeton and be Beacon Hills’ protector.”

“Does that mean I won’t ever be able to leave Beacon Hills?” Stiles had to ask. “Like, you know, field trips? College? Not that I’m not grateful because I’d rather be alive and stuck in Beacon Hills forever than dead, but you know, I’m just checking out my boundaries.”

“No, Mieczysław,” Talia smiled. “Although you will be tied to the land, you need not be present except for several times a year. The Nemeton will communicate with you when your presence is needed.”

“So, he’ll live through this, and afterwards he’ll get to live a life, go to college, get a job?” Stiles’ dad asked.

“Yes,” came the answer. “It is now up to you to choose.” Talia turned to Derek and Peter and smiled at them. “I love you and one day, I will see you again, but I hope that that time will not come for a long, long while. You must work together, all of you, to protect Beacon Hills. Mieczysław and the Nemeton will need time to recover. It will not be overnight. Whatever the doctors tell you that Mieczysław has is not a lie. Do all you can to give him as much time for the Nemeton to heal him and to heal itself, or he and all of Beacon Hills will be lost.”

“That means, no more pulling out Nemeton sprouts!” Lydia yelled at the druid who now stood alone.

“Both packs must band together, and we will see Beacon Hills protected by the Nemeton, its chosen Champion, werewolves, a kitsune, a banshee, humans, and a druid,” Talia continued. “You must become part of the pack hierarchy, Alan, or go back to the druid council and have them appoint a new emissary. You cannot remain in the shadows and you cannot wait and see, to decide how to act.”

Deaton nodded slowly, thoughtfully.

“You said ‘packs’,” Peter spoke up. “As in more than one?”

“There is the true alpha’s pack, and there is the Hale pack,” Talia answered, gesturing at Scott with one hand and then Derek with the other.

“There is no Hale pack. We don’t have an alpha,” Peter shook his head. “We are omegas. Unless we join Scott’s pack.”

“What Derek did to save Cora’s life, give up the alpha spark, is not permanent,” Talia answered. “The spark will also recover and return, and Derek will once again become an alpha. But what has transpired here so far has already attracted evil and will continue to attract evil until the Nemeton is stronger. You must unite the packs and work together for the greater good.”

Stiles and Derek stared at each other in shock.

“I hope you will make the right choice,” Talia turned and again caught everyone’s eyes, looking long and hard at Deaton. Then in the blink of an eye, she was back to being a big black wolf and she raised her head and howled, and as if unable to resist, Derek, Peter and even Scott beta shifted and began howling along with her until the wolf disappeared into thin air. In her wake, a baseball bat lay on the stump, looking as unassuming as possible. “A gift… for Mieczysław…” Talia’s voice echoed through the forest before it faded away.

Stiles made grabby hands at the bat and Peter retrieved it, careful to not hurt any of the apparently growing bits of the Nemeton. He fake handed it to Stiles a few times, pulling it back out of his reach, until Derek snatched the bat away with a sigh and handed it to Stiles. The teen hugged it to his body and smiled happily.

“It’s warm,” Stiles cooed, hugging the bat to his face.

“I’m guessing that it’s part of the Nemeton,” Peter murmured.

Then they all stood there and blinked at each other, the contrasting images of a dried out desert and the lush forest lingering for a long time even though Talia Hale was gone.

“Well,” Stiles’ dad blew out a breath. And that about said it all for Stiles as well.

Stiles pounded Derek’s chest, signaling that he was ready to be on his own two feet again, and the werewolf carefully lowered Stiles’ legs to the ground, keeping his arm securely around Stiles.

“I know which option I’m choosing,” Stiles shrugged, trying to make a joke out of it.

Derek was nodding and so was Stiles’ dad. Lydia, Malia and Kira came even closer to the sheriff and Peter, both of whom were flanking Stiles and Derek. Scott was halfway in between them and Deaton and he kept inching closer to their side of the tree.

“I think that leaves you, Deaton,” Peter called across the stump.

“Are you joining us for real, or are you going to take the other road and bring all of Beacon Hills down with you?” Lydia asked. “Balance be damned.”

“And if you’re going to join us, can you quit with the cryptic clues and actually give us help when we need it?” Stiles asked. “I mean, seriously. Most of us are just a bunch of high school kids who got thrown into a situation that they never thought possible. Why would you think that making us ‘figure it out ourselves’ is a good idea? A rampaging insane alpha or a kanima versus a bunch of high school kids? Are you kidding me?”

It felt good to let it out like that.

“You have to make the right choice, Doctor Deaton,” Scott had his earnest puppy dog face on. “Even if Stiles’ life wasn’t at stake, surely you can’t choose the option that draws all kinds of evil to Beacon Hills. How can that be regressing to the mean? How can unleashing evil on humans who can’t possibly be prepared for this kind of thing be ‘normal’?”

“Could it be a trick?” Deaton seemed to be speaking to himself.

“I heard nothing but truth and the trees whispering to us to listen to her,” Lydia said. “The trees were whispering that Stiles would die, that we would all die, if we didn’t listen to her.”

“Sure sounds convincing to me,” Stiles piped up. “When a banshee speaks about death, you listen.”

Deaton stared at them for another moment, and Scott kept up the puppy dog eyes and the sad, hopeful look that Stiles had never learned to resist.

“Come with us,” Kira added.

“Or go back to the druid council and send us someone who will be a true participant and a packmate,” Peter was glaring at the vet now. “Someone who won’t just stand by while the world keeps on burning.”

Scott beckoned to the druid who slowly walked over to their side, and slowly, the image of desolation and ruin faded away, leaving only the lively green one. They all seemed to blow out a collective sigh of relief as they looked at each other, breaking out into smiles.

Stiles found himself being bear hugged by his dad, and as he was leaning over to get a hug from Scott, his legs gave out and he could feel himself tilting towards the ground and darkness encroaching him. He didn’t know how long it was until he woke up again, and he was back in Derek’s arms, cradled carefully, the bat balanced on his body, and they were walking.

“Did I faint again?” Stiles asked, trying to crack an eye open.

“Yeah, dude,” Scott’s face appeared in his line of sight. “You’re such a princess.” The levity was faked, Stiles could tell how concerned Scott was for him but he still smiled anyway.

Stiles lifted a hand and flicked Scott’s nose. “Bad dog,” he said sternly. “No dog biscuit.”

He felt rather than heard Derek chuckle, a rumble deep in his chest. “Glad I’m not the only one you treat that way,” Derek murmured.

“Home, Jeeves,” Stiles pointed.

“We’re headed to the hospital, Stiles,” it was Stiles’ dad’s voice. “You were doing better after spending some time on that Nemeton, but when Deaton pulled out that sapling, it might’ve done the opposite. We’re going to get you checked out again.”

“Aw, come on, Dad!” Stiles whined in protest.

“You’re sick, Stiles,” his dad rubbed his hand through Stiles’ hair as they walked. “We’ve known it for a while, and now we have confirmation. We’re going to everything we can do make sure you live long enough for the Nemeton to heal you. Not just for the good of Beacon Hills, but because… hell, I don’t know how I’d find the strength to keep on living if you died too…”

“Dad,” Stiles sighed. “I’m hanging in there.”

“Only because you have a big strong werewolf to cart you around,” Lydia smirked.

“You can get your own, because Derek is _my_ big strong werewolf,” Stiles stuck his tongue out at her, and at that moment, he realized that he was really and truly no longer in love with her.

He loved her, of course, she was one of his best friends, and she was part of his pack, but he wasn’t in love with her. He hadn’t really fantasized about her in months, come to think. Even before the whole nogitsune thing. He’d let go of her and the idea of being in love with her when he saw how much she loved Jackson. It wasn’t the kind of thing anyone should stand in the way of, so he had stepped aside, and while he thought that it would have been the most difficult thing for him to do, it hadn’t actually bothered him that much. He liked this friendship, this trust that he had for Lydia and Lydia in him now, much better than that crazy rollercoaster of emotions that he used to subject himself to depending on how Lydia treated him that day. Besides, he was being cuddled into a big strong werewolf chest, and Derek was not just hot like burning, but he was also one of the snarkiest yet kindest men Stiles had ever met. It wasn’t hard to stop pining for Lydia when he had Derek there to start pining for instead.

He sighed and snuggled into Derek’s chest, too tired to argue about having to go to the hospital. It wasn’t going to be like Eichen House again. They wouldn’t take away his phone and lock him in his room, keep him from calling anyone. Besides, someone from the pack would surely stay with him for at least some of the time, and with any luck it would be Derek. Not that Stiles wanted to pick a favorite, but he was more than a little bit fond of Derek. He respected him, and he thought that Derek’s sly sense of humor was perfect, and the cute bunny teeth that he had when he smiled was adorable, and well, the man was hot like burning but he was so much more than that. He tried hard to do the right thing, despite the fact that he was kind of the opposite in every way than Scott was. But he had come back, and he hadn’t let them all die at Peter’s hands, and he hadn’t run away just because things were difficult either. He was dependable and he and Stiles had saved each other’s lives more than a few times, and Stiles had gotten really used to depending on him, especially lately, with things that were more than just pack safety.


	9. Chapter Nine: Derek

**Chapter Nine: Derek**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

It was a few months after the confrontation on what was left of the Nemeton. In the end, even though Deaton had made the choice to save Stiles, save the Nemeton and ultimately, save Beacon Hills, he ended up sending for a replacement to be the Beacon Hills pack emissary. He stopped formally being part of the pack and wasn’t the emissary anymore, although Derek had to wonder if he had ever formally _been_ pack, given how he’d acted. Despite that, Deaton had decided to stick around Beacon Hills and help how he could. He was still mentoring Scott, and for that Derek knew that Stiles was grateful. He kept the vet clinic open and kept caring for the pets of the denizens of Beacon Hills.

Derek’s eyes were slowly sputtering back into being red at times, although he hadn’t fully recovered his alpha spark. But this time, he and Scott were doing better at sharing the territory, and more importantly, sharing Stiles. Because Derek wasn’t giving Stiles up and was doing his best to help him get through the illness that he had smelled on the boy.

It had been a long and difficult road for Stiles. He had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a condition he had apparently inherited from his mother, and that the nogitsune had teased them with by reproducing the exact MRI as Stiles’ mother’s had been, but as it turned out, the demon had actually left Stiles with that condition as a parting gift. The MRI had been conclusive and not just an exact copy of his mother’s MRI. Also disturbing was the fact that Stiles had also been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer of the blood, which was why he had been steadily losing weight, having dizzy spells, loss of appetite, the shivering. It explained everything that had been physically ailing the teen. It still chilled Derek to the bone when he replayed his mother’s words about Stiles: _“Whatever the doctors tell you that Mieczysław has is not a lie. Do all you can to give him as much time for the Nemeton to heal him and to heal itself, or he and all of Beacon Hills will be lost._ ”

Stiles had been in and out of the hospital in the last few months, getting treatments, and going through radiation therapy and other painful procedures, and he had upped his level of snark to cope with it. Derek couldn’t help but admire the strength of will that Stiles possessed. He refused to put his life entirely on hold while things happened to him that were beyond his control. He’d kept up with his schoolwork, although that wasn’t entirely his own doing, since Lydia had made it her goal to make sure Stiles did not fall behind. She couldn’t abide having no competition for valedictorian, and even though they were only juniors, she was not going to take any chances of letting Stiles sit the year out and not graduate with them. And given that most of them had to go to school, or to work, it had mostly been Derek, the one member of the pack who didn’t have a job or had to go to school or was, you know, Peter, who sat with Stiles for most of his hospital stays and procedures that he had to endure. It also meant that Derek was the one who had to put up with the extra snarkiness that Stiles subjected him to as his method of coping, but it was also Derek who was there to hold his hand when things were too overwhelming, and take his pain when he could. The days when Stiles was too tired or too sick to be his usual loud and incorrigible self were the days that Derek hated the most. He would much rather bear the brunt of the boy’s sarcastic comments and barbs than the monosyllabic and listless answers that he would get on the bad days.

On the bad days, Derek would bring a book that he knew Stiles would enjoy and he would sit at his bedside and read to him. He read through all of The Hobbit, which made Stiles smile even through his bad day, as it reminded him of the times when his mother used to read it to him when he was little. He read a mystery novel written by a British author that Laura had loved, and Stiles, of course, figured it out about a third of the way through the book, and kept crowing about it after he was proven right. He read a humorous science fiction novel that made Stiles giggle weakly in his bed. He tried hard to brighten Stiles’ day when he was having bad days, that he even read Stiles portions of a romance novel that he had found left behind in the abandoned subway station that he thought had been either Erica’s or Boyd’s. The portions that he read were the most ridiculous and unrealistic sex scenes, which he read with as straight a face as possible, as robotic as he could possibly pull off, and the resulting weak giggles that Stiles gave was absolutely worth it all, especially when the teen would reach out a hand and hold on to Derek’s wrist as he laughed helplessly. That voluntary touch, Stiles reaching out to hang on to him, on days when anything touching his body hurt him so much it made him lie still and tears leak out of his eyes, that was everything to Derek.

But every few nights, the Nemeton would call to Stiles. Derek and the sheriff had gotten used to midnight jaunts into the Preserve, and they would help each other dress Stiles as warmly as they could before they all went traipsing through the woods, that was if the sheriff wasn’t working the night shift. If he was, then it would just be Derek accompanying Stiles, managing to bundle the skinny teenager up. Then he would sit by the Nemeton while Stiles slept on it, and if the sheriff wasn’t working, the two men would chat idly and Derek would wait for the sheriff to nod off while he kept watch over the both of them. They stopped trying to rouse Stiles or just take him home again when they realized that if they let Stiles sleep on the huge tree stump, he would awaken feeling and sounding more like his normal self, and he would have a good day, where the good days were few and far between. Whatever it was the Nemeton did to call him to it, and no matter how uncomfortable it looked for Stiles to lie on a tree stump, it seemed to do him good.

Given that it was still the dead of winter, the temperature did tend to drop at nights. Beacon Hills might be in California, but it was in Northern California which made it much colder and damper than places like LA. It was Scott who was the one who thought to just leave sets of blankets wrapped in plastic to protect it from the damp of the Preserve, which made it easier not just to keep Stiles warm but to keep himself and the sheriff warm as well.

On one of those nights where both Derek and the sheriff ended up sitting on the ground, leaning against what was left of the tree while Stiles was starfished on the stump itself, Stilinski asked Derek a question.

“What did you do to make Eichen House back off?” he asked. “They sent me a notice telling me that I didn’t owe them any money anymore, which is a huge relief, especially given the kind of hospital bill that we’re now going to face, with what Stiles is going through now. You didn’t pay our bill for us, did you?”

Derek gave him a small grin. “No, I didn’t pay your bills,” he shrugged. “I did however sic the Hale attorneys on them. All these years, they’d been automatically paid their retainer, and we didn’t ask them for anything, they were happy to do some work for us. I asked Peter for their number, called them, explained what had happened to Stiles while in Eichen House, and asked them what we could do about it.”

Stilinski’s tired eyes had widened at that. “Are these lawyers that know that you know, you’re…” he mimed fangs and claws, kind of the way that Stiles would, which made Derek’s lips quirk up in a smile. The more he hung out with the sheriff, the more he realized how much he and his son were alike.

“Yes, they know about the…” and here Derek let his eyes glow blue and his fangs drop a little, although he did mime the claws barehanded, because it amused him to see the sheriff’s hand curled into fake claws the way Stiles did it.

“That’s helpful!” the sheriff remarked.

“Yeah, well, werewolves need legal help too,” Derek shrugged.

“So, what did they say?”

“They decided to countersue,” Derek grinned. “They claimed it was malpractice, and an abuse of power. And the fact that their ‘security’ was obviously inadequate since Stiles was able to escape – even though it was the nogitsune’s doing, it doesn’t matter, they lost Stiles while he was in their care – that made things even worse for Eichen.”

“Wow,” the sheriff had to grin at that. “Well, thanks for getting them off our backs.”

“They’re still working through the details, but at the last update, they told me that they would be able to get a good settlement for you and Stiles.”

“A settlement?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stiles never told you this? I told him to tell you,” Derek rolled his eyes and glanced over the edge of the tree to look at the sleeping boy. “They’re going to be paying you some amount of money, damages or whatever, for the terrible treatment that Stiles was subject to while in their care.”

“What?” Stilinski looked shocked.

“It wasn’t even anything that had to do with the supernatural,” Derek shrugged. “The attorneys explained it to me, that they would have done the exact same thing for a human client, too. Because whatever is going on at Eichen House doesn’t look kosher. Stiles described a suicide that happened as he was being taken to his room, and they didn’t call in the authorities. They didn’t let Stiles call you, the sheriff, to let you know about a suicide. Instead they locked him in his room. Then Stiles’ roommate told him it happened all the time, Sheriff. That’s not right. People’s lives shouldn’t be dismissed just like that just because people think they’re crazy. If suicides occur on a such a regular basis that the patients don’t bat an eyelid about it, then something is _wrong_ with what they’re doing there. Their treatments aren’t working, their security measures aren’t enough, and they need to be fixed. It’s not normal and it shouldn’t be normalized.”

“That’s… surprisingly logical,” Stilinski looked both shocked and accepting.

“Stiles thought so, too,” Derek grinned.

The sheriff rolled his eyes, and the two of them glanced over the stump to check on the sleeping teen before relaxing again.

“Well, thank you for that,” Stilinski sighed. “That is a load off my mind.”

“I think I’m going to keep them going, too,” Derek continued. “Not just for Stiles, I mean. That place sounds like a nightmare and needs to be reviewed and reformed.”

“That sounds like a really good thing.”

Derek nodded. And that was the end of that discussion.

It was gradual, the change in both Stiles and the Nemeton. But one night, Derek frowned at the stump, thinking that it looked a few inches taller than it had been the last time they were there. There were quite a few of the saplings growing out of the stump, but not so many that Stiles would crush any of them when he climbed on to sleep on the tree. Or maybe the Nemeton’s saplings were growing in such a way that they were accommodating Stiles’ prone body on it? Or maybe the saplings were somehow mobile and able to move around to make way for Stiles? Derek didn’t know because it seemed that every possibility was real. But he hadn’t considered the fact that the stump would itself keep growing, as if the tree hadn’t been cut down. He eyed the tree suspiciously, unable to confirm whether the stump was growing the first time he noticed it, but every few visits, it did seem to change. By the time it was a foot taller than the beginning, Derek quietly asked the sheriff if he agreed that the stump was getting taller, and the sheriff agreed with his estimation that it was maybe a foot taller than it had originally been.

They took hope that it meant that the Nemeton was recovering, and that despite his diagnoses at the hospital, that Stiles would also be healed. Luckily, they seemed to be right. The healthier the Nemeton saplings and the more the stump grew, the better Stiles seemed to be. His doctors were surprised at how well he seemed to be responding to the treatments and they began to hope that he would be in remission sooner rather than later. They also posited that whatever the treatments were that Stiles was undergoing for the Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, it seemed to be staying the progress of the frontotemporal dementia, which was an incurable, untreatable condition. Derek could smell the hope and optimism coming from his doctors now, where before, despite the optimistic words that they spoke, their scents gave them away as to the dire situation that Stiles was in. It made the hours Derek spent keeping Stiles company a lot more cheerful and there were much fewer fatalistic jokes coming from Stiles.

They were sitting, side by side, on Stiles’ bed watching one of the many Marvel movies that Stiles insisted Derek needed to watch on Stiles’ laptop, while Stiles was flipping through textbooks and doing his schoolwork at the same time, with his usual excuse of “Oh, I’ve watched this like a million times, Derek, and besides, I need to do a bunch of things at once or the ADHD won’t let me focus on anything, and you know that I haven’t had any Adderall since it has a negative ‘drug-drug interaction’ with the thousand and one other meds that I’m on now to help me not keel over and die so I have to do other things to cope” for forcing Derek to watch a movie while he did something else. It was right before lunch and Derek would go down to the kitchen and whip Stiles up something light, fresh and healthy, and didn’t bother his currently delicate digestive system when the movie ended. It had been almost two months since the confrontation at the Nemeton and Stiles was actually doing better, and he was having a good day. It had been a Nemeton night last night, and he was almost positively chipper, talking non-stop, commenting on the movie and his homework, pausing every so often for Derek to grunt a response, and he would turn to Derek and beam at him as if to reward him for the response, as onomatopoeic as it was. Out of the blue, the question surprised Derek.

“Why are you still here, Derek?” Stiles asked.

“In Beacon Hills?” Derek gave him a scowl. “I live here?”

Stiles blew out a breath and rolled his eyes. “No, genius. I mean, why are you still _here_. In my house. In my room. With _me_. I’m sure that there’s a million other things out there more exciting than sitting around and doing nothing with a should-be-terminal-but-he’ll-recover-because-the-magical-tree-will-heal-him kid?” He had affected a casual, if even, nonchalant tone of voice, but Derek could smell the intensity coming off of him from this question.

“Are you calling this movie that you told me I had to watch or you would refuse to be seen with my uncool ass again, ‘nothing’?” Derek couldn’t help but ask. Because shit, the guy had seriously bugged him and bugged him until he OKed watching these movies.

“This movie is not nothing!” Stiles snorted. “It’s a key piece of the Marvel Cinematic Universe because… and I’m not going to spoil the ending of this for you!”

Derek couldn’t help grinning at him. He was so predictable in some ways, but also ridiculously surprising in so many others that it amused Derek to yank his chain.

“I see what you’re doing here!” he threw up his hands, and a pencil and a couple of papers went flying off the bed.

Derek got off the bed to retrieve the items and settled back down, turning his attention back to the movie. Which Stiles then paused.

“I’m serious, Derek,” Stiles said quietly. “I don’t understand why you’ve stuck around this entire time. You’ve spent way more time with me than even my Dad or Scott has.”

Derek sighed and started to open his mouth.

“And don’t tell me it’s because I’m pack,” Stiles said fiercely. “I mean, yes, I get that you care about the pack. You want to protect us all and protect Beacon Hills, since that is what generations of Hales have done for hundreds and hundreds of years. But you know, Lydia drops by and hangs out with me a few times a week, and so do Kira and Malia, and even Peter. Scott comes by almost every day, and of course there’s my dad, but I’m his son so he’s kind of responsible for me. But you’ve been here every day, and every night, and you only leave to give me alone time with other members of the pack, and only if they promise to call you if something happens to me. I just don’t see you doing this for anyone other than maybe… Cora?”

Derek sighed. “Do you want me to stop?”

Stiles’ hand shot out to grab Derek’s arm. “That’s not what I’m saying at all,” he shook his head, his heart was racing and Derek worried that he would actually hurt himself. “I’m grateful…” he said hesitantly. “I don’t know that I would’ve made it through some of those really awful days if you weren’t here, helping me hold on, and you know, just sitting here and being you, being my rock. Fuck, Derek, you read to me to cheer me up. You even read me crappy romance novels to make me laugh. I’m still imagining Boyd reading those books, and not Erica, for the record.”

Derek sat and stared at him Stiles’ eyes shone almost amber at that point. His scent was filled with confusion and a whole lot of longing.

“I guess I just would like to understand why you’ve been so… kind… to me,” he finished, looking down, and looking uncomfortable.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Stiles looked up. “I guess? Although I thought I was the one doing the asking.”

“It’s related. Or maybe it is,” Derek shrugged.

Stiles gestured with his hand for Derek to continue, and the werewolf had to use his inhuman reflexes to grab the next pencil that accidentally went flying out of the air before it could get out of range.

“Why did you make me the king on your chessboard?” Derek’s heart was pounding, too, now.

“That was the nogitsune,” Stiles denied it.

“Was it? Go was the nogitsune’s game. Yours is chess,” Derek pressed the point. “And if we’re talking chess, shouldn’t Scott be the king? Or even your dad? Why was I the king?”

Stiles sighed. “It made sense,” he muttered. “Before Scott became an alpha, you were always the one we went to for everything. You were more willing to help us than Deaton. You saved my life and Scott’s a whole bunch of times, and all we did was be completely ungrateful and be all… you know…”

“Upset about having to break up with a hunter girlfriend before her family could kill you?”

“Yeah, well, that was Scott, not me,” Stiles grinned. “But yeah. And well, we _did_ get you arrested.”

“ _Twice_ ,” Derek scowled. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that.”

Stiles’ laugh at that made Derek’s brows smooth out, and he even grinned. “So? The answer?”

Stiles gave Derek a wry grin. “You’re important to me,” he shrugged, saying it as quickly as he could.

Derek gave him a nod. “Likewise.” He leaned back and settled in, waiting for Stiles to un-pause the movie.

“Derek,” Stiles sighed. “I’m serious.”

“So am I,” Derek gave him a long look.

“I’m important to you?” Stiles was practically squeaking by the end of the sentence.

Derek nodded.

“I’m just a dumb, annoying kid.”

“You’re annoying, I’ll give you that,” Derek softened the statement with a teasing grin.

Stiles rolled his eyes and smacked Derek’s shoulder with his long, bony fingers, pulling his hand back and shaking it, grumbling about how Derek was harder than a brick wall.

“You’re important to me, too, Stiles,” Derek finally gave him the words that he seemed to need to hear. “And not just because you’re pack.”

“Do you think of me like a little brother or something?” his voice was small.

“No,” Derek said shortly.

“Because I really like you, Derek,” Stiles continued speaking although he had averted his eyes again. He smelled sad and Derek hated that he smelled of sadness. “And not like I like Scott. Not like a brother or a friend. It’s not even like I used to like Lydia, because who I liked was a figment of my imagination and not the real her. I know who you are, Derek, I see you. And I like you, like you. You staying around and doting on me – my dad’s words, not mine – just gives me the wrong idea and if it’s not that and you don’t like me like that, then I do maybe need a little time away from you to make sure I don’t just keep falling harder and deeper for you.”

“Stiles,” Derek sighed.

“It’s why you were the king on my chessboard, even with the nogitsune controlling me. You’re _that_ important to me.”

“You’re that important to me, too,” Derek shrugged, unsure what he should do or say, but knowing that he couldn’t stay silent after Stiles’ confession. “I thought that it was Beacon Hills that was calling me back, pulling me back, when Peter and I were in South America, taking Cora back to her pack there. They asked me to join the pack, stay with them, you know?” Derek sighed. “And as much as I wanted to, I just… couldn’t. I knew I had to come back here. I couldn’t stay away.”

Stiles’ eyes were wide and looked huge in his gaunt face, and he was hanging on Derek’s every word.

“I thought it was the territory, the land, calling me back,” Derek thought back to when he did think that, when he dreamed about the Nemeton and his mother. “I thought it was because I was a Hale and the land had already laid its claim on me. But it wasn’t Beacon Hills that called me back.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Nope. I thought it was at first, and I know I was more than relieved to get home and be back here,” Derek gave him a small smile. “But I didn’t really feel at home until I saw you. But then it wasn’t _really_ you and you were possessed. I couldn’t believe that the nogitsune would do that to me, have me get pulled back because I wanted to be close to you, and then have you not be _you_. It’s part of why I needed to get you back. Why you surviving the exorcism or whatever the hell it was that we did, why that was of paramount importance. Why I was losing my grip on my control when I knew you were in danger.”

Stiles nodded. “So… you like me?”

“Yeah,” Derek nodded. “And not like you like Scott. It’s probably closer to… how Scott thought of Allison.”

“Before or after they broke up?” Stiles asked.

Derek rolled his eyes. “Before, asshole,” he said grumpily.

The smile Stiles gave him was both breathtaking and a little bit heartbreaking. Derek wished that Stiles was less skin and bones, and more healthy, but he was getting back there on his own steam, with all the meds, and with the Nemeton, and Derek would do everything in his power to get him the rest of the way there.

“You’re my anchor,” Derek admitted softly.

“OK then,” Stiles grinned. “Why haven’t you made a move? I mean, aside from the me dying but not dying deal?”

“You know what… Kate… did to me?” Derek couldn’t meet Stiles’ curious eyes now.

“I _do_ know.” The sympathy and understanding in Stiles’ eyes were almost too much for Derek to handle.

“I was really young and I didn’t know anything,” Derek kept his voice soft. “You’re not much older than I was at the time. I can’t do anything with you until you’re older. If you still feel the same way about me in a few years, maybe…”

“A few years? I’m not that young! I’ll be eighteen in a few months!” Stiles objected. “Officially not jailbait then.”

“Still…”

“Look,” Stiles took his hand, hesitantly, his fingers trembling and Derek couldn’t tell if it was the moment that made his fingers tremble or his illness. “I’m not some innocent fifteen-year-old. I’ve had crazed alpha werewolves, kanimas, alpha packs and even a darach try to kill me, not to mention the whole nogitsune possession which is still the gift that keeps on giving,” he gestured to himself. “I know a lot of things. I might be young, but I’ve faced a lot of danger. It’s not the same.”

“Still…”

“Look… I’m in no shape to do anything anyway, right?” Stiles was bargaining now. “So we can table anything physical for a while. Until I’m better. Until I’m over the legal age of consent. And until you’re, you know, ready. I’ve been in love with you for a while, I can wait for you for as long as you need me to.”

Derek gave him a smile and nodded slowly.

“Besides, you know, I’m not even a virgin anymore,” Stiles pursed his lips.

“Malia?” Derek guessed. He’d seen how uncomfortable Stiles had been around Malia when he had first been freed from the fox demon.

He nodded. “It was at Eichen House,” he frowned, and Derek did not like the downward turn that his lips had taken. “I was drugged up and had the letharia vulpine in me and we were in the basement together. I don’t know. It happened. It’s almost like a dream and I feel like maybe I didn’t really say yes? A physiological reaction does not equal true consent. Even I know that. And I don’t even know if Malia understands what happened or maybe she was drugged, too. I don’t know how to feel about it… But still. Cherry… popped,” he made a popping sound with his mouth to accompany the words. “I would be of no use to the darach now.”

“Good thing she’s dead, then,” Derek growled. “I’m sorry your first time was so… ambivalent,” Derek’s heart welled with sympathy for the boy. As much as he regretted Kate being his own first, it hurt him to know that Stiles hadn’t had the best first experience either.

“But maybe… one day… you’d be up to you know, being with me. If you want. You could be ace, or demi, or something and that would be cool, too, as long as…”

“Shut up, Stiles,” Derek smiled at him, before he leaned in and pressed his lips gently against Stiles’. It was a soft, chaste kiss. “This OK?”

“Yeah,” the boy grinned.

Derek evaded his arms and leaned back against the headboard. “Let’s finish this stupid movie and I’ll make you lunch before you faint from hunger. _Again_ , I might add.”

“You _do_ dote on me,” Stiles said in mock wonder. “And I do not faint.”

Derek rolled his eyes. “When you’re better, and after your eighteenth birthday, and if you’ll be patient with me and my own hang ups…”

“Whatever you need, Derek.”

“Maybe we can… date.”

Stiles’ smile was amazing, like the sun coming out from behind rainclouds. “I’d like that.”

“Great. Now shut the fuck up and get that movie going again.”

“I _knew_ you’d enjoy it!”

“I didn’t say that I was enjoying it!” Derek objected.

“Too late! You love this movie. I was right and you were wrong.”

“Stiles…”

Stiles’ laughter was the best thing Derek had ever heard in a long time. Even if he was cackling like a hyena. Derek put his hand on Stiles’ face and pretended to squish him, making the teen laugh even harder.

“Mieczysław…” Derek growled.

Stiles gave an outraged squeak and threw himself onto Derek, trying to stop him from saying his name, and the exercise in futility made both him and Derek laugh. It pained Derek to feel how much lighter Stiles weighed now, but he took comfort in the fact that he was getting better, and he would recover. The Nemeton was growing well, and he had no doubt that Stiles was on the road to his own recovery.


	10. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

[](https://i.imgur.com/UA0lw6Y.jpg)

Derek found himself sitting on a bench in the Beacon Hills High School locker room, with Stiles standing over him. He was feeling really terrible and he couldn’t explain it. His body hurt and he was finding it hard to catch his breath. It didn’t feel like a flashback. He didn’t know what was going on.

“It was a dream,” Derek said, and it was difficult to get the words out. “It was actually… it was more like a nightmare.”

“OK,” Stiles had that crease between his brow that meant that he was giving Derek his full attention. “What happened?”

“It started with these hunters that caught Peter and me after we left Cora. It was a family of them, led by a guy named Severo. They broke into my loft.”

Derek was surprised that Stiles didn’t make a snarky comment about his loft, because it did seem to be the scene of so many tragedies. Maybe Derek should think about moving, but he did like the loft. It fit him. He ignored the surprising lack of commentary from Stiles and recounted how Severo and his family had come to his loft, were beating the shit out of him – why in the hell was Derek always the one getting the shit kicked out of him? Another question that Derek would like answered, thank you – and asking him about ‘la loba’. The female wolf. The she-wolf, they had called her.

Derek refused to tell them anything about Cora, thinking that was who they were after, but they had been genuinely surprised to hear the name.

“Cora?” Severo had said. “Who the hell is Cora?”

And then someone had lobbed a smoke bomb into the loft and Derek had enough self-preservation to hit the floor. He could hear the hunters raise their rifles and turn around wildly, and a growling that was unfamiliar, and was definitely _not_ coming from Derek began echoing in the apartment. There were gunshots and one by one the hunters went down with pained cries. Finally, all the hunters were down, and Derek straightened back up, trying to peer through the smoke to see what in the hell was happening.

The sound of a shotgun cocking made him turn, and then there was gunshot and fire went through his chest.

In the locker room, Derek panted harshly and put a hand on his chest.

“Who was it?” Stiles asked.

“There's a lot of myths about how people can be turned into a werewolf. Usually a bite. There's one about rain water.”

“Drinking rain water out of the puddle of a werewolf's print,” Stiles nodded his agreement.

“There’s another one,” and Derek thought about how a person could be turned by a scratch, if the claws go deep enough. And how Peter had torn Kate’s throat out, but had she died? Or had that been just deep enough to turn her without killing her?

“Derek, if this is all just a dream, why do you look so worried?” Stiles sat himself across from Derek, leaning forward so he was close to him.

“Because I don’t remember waking up,” Derek gave Stiles a wide-eyed stare, knowing that he probably looked like a deer in headlights, but unable to help himself. “So tell me, how do you _know_? How do you know if you’re still dreaming?”

Stiles would know the answer to this because he had been the one having waking dreams while the nogitsune possessed him. Stiles was the one who still awoke from nightmares, screaming in terror.

“Your fingers,” Stiles muttered urgently. “In dreams you have extra fingers.” And Stiles was the one who still made Derek help him count his fingers when he awoke, count them over and over again, always to five, always only to five, to convince him that he was awake and that the nightmare, whatever it was that had terrorized him in his sleep, it was _over_.

Derek grabbed Stiles’ hand and lifted it up, and saw the familiar wide palm, pale, long bony fingers, veins protruding prominently on the back of his hand, and counted his fingers. One, two, three, four, five… and six. There were six of them. _Six_. Not five. Derek couldn’t remember waking up because he hadn’t woken up from this dream. Stiles was the dream. Not the thing with Severo or the being shot in the chest with a shotgun.

Immediately, Derek found himself back in his loft, the smoke starting to disperse a little in his loft, and he fell to his knees as he began bleeding from the bullet wound. “It’s real,” he whispered in horror. “ _You’re_ real.”

And then Kate Argent, who had raped Derek when he was fifteen years old and legally unable to consent, who had seduced him while plotting the murder of his family, who had burned his family alive in their house in the woods, and who had been killed by Peter, her throat torn out, when he went out for revenge, Kate stepped out of the smoke, allowing Derek to see her clearly. She smelled like herself, the same perfume, the same scent of confidence and deceit that had been everything to Derek at one point in his life, but she also smelled different. Feline, somehow. Even though Derek knew that there was no way that someone like Kate Argent could get a pet cat. She was a psychopath and would have absolutely no empathy for a human being, never mind an animal.

She stood over him, gloating about what she had accomplished. “That’s right, Derek,” her smile was pure evil and it made Derek sick to his stomach. “And if seeing me is a surprise, watch this.”

Her face shifted, turning blue, with markings like some kind of large, spotted cat – leopard or jaguar – , her fangs dropped, and she let out a mighty roar. It filled Derek with fear. Jackson had become a kanima because he had been wracked with issues of his identity and his own sense of self, because he hadn’t accepted and processed the fact that he had been adopted. For a turned were, the shifter reflected its soul. If Kate had turned into some kind of werecat, it was still a reflection of her soul. And Derek knew that this woman had the blackest soul of anyone he had ever met, except maybe the soul of her own father, Gerard.

Whatever Kate Argent wanted with him now, it wouldn’t be as simple as just killing him. Derek stared at her, helpless again, as blood dripped down his chest. He seemed to always be powerless in her grip. He loathed her with every fiber of his being, and yet, he was still there, just staring at her, frozen to the spot, unable to put up even a token fight as the shifter roared ferociously at him. All he could think was that he was lost, and he hoped that the pack would be OK without him. He wished that he had taken Stiles up on that offer of a relationship and not asked him to wait until he was older and they were ready. Had tasted more of Stiles’ lips than that one small chaste kiss that they had had a few weeks ago.

And then, abruptly, out of nowhere, something swung in the air and Kate Argent’s head separated from her body and went flying off, blood spurting everywhere as her headless body fell to the floor of Derek’s loft.

“I told you there’s something off about this loft, Derek,” Derek watched as Stiles appeared out of the smoke, the Nemeton baseball bat casually slung over his still-bony shoulder. He was still pale and skinny and sickly looking, but Stiles’ eyes were glowing a soft blue, and his irises weren’t visible. His eyes were entirely made out of the whites of his eyes, although they glowed a soft, gentle blue. Stiles grinned at him, a familiar, irreverent grin, and slowly his eyes returned to their normal honey brown, although the blue glow lingered for a long moment. “Thank fuck you didn’t put carpeting in or your cleaning bill would be _atrocious!_ ”

Even though Derek was about to pass out with blood loss, he couldn’t help but laugh, chuckling through the blood bubbling down his chin. Kate Argent, apparently some kind of werejaguar or whatever, laid headless and lifeless – dead for real this time since decapitation was a surefire way to kill any werecreature – on his floor, and Stiles stood there looking bright and happy, as if he hadn’t just used the bat made of wood from the Nemeton to smack Kate’s head clean off her neck.

“There’s a bunch of weird things that came with her,” Stiles shrugged. “The Nemeton tells me they’re called Berserkers. I called the pack and they’re going to check that out, while I take you to Deaton. We can research Berserkers there.”

Derek smiled, allowing Stiles to help him off the floor, wrapping an arm around the teen and inhaling his clean smell. Whatever was happening, Berserkers or anything else, he knew that Beacon Hills was fine. Stiles and their combined packs would take care of it.

“This time, we’re going to burn her body,” he told Stiles as they stumbled towards the door.

“We’ll salt and burn her,” Stiles agreed easily.

“What?” Derek had no idea what Stiles was talking about.

“ _Supernatural?_ No? Son of a bitch!”

Derek frowned at him.

“We’ll have to catch you up on that show,” Stiles told him. “But yeah, I’m going to let you light the pyre, babe,” Stiles kissed his temple gently. “Now let’s get to the car before my legs give out. You’re fucking heavy, dude.”

“Don’t call me dude.”

“Sourwolf,” Stiles rolled his eyes.

Derek was chuckling even though the pain was almost overwhelming. This was his life. This was his pack. And this was his boyfriend, sort of. This was everything he couldn’t imagine ever having again after his family was burned to death in their own home. He knew now that here, in Stiles’ arms, was exactly where he belonged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story is done! I'm out of time and I have to post this for the challenge, so I will do my proper end notes tomorrow. <3 <3


End file.
